SIIA-amp-network-feature-photo

Life Annuity Specialist’s One-Click Trial Success

by Media

The original trial sign-up page for Money-Media’s Life Annuity Specialist looked a bit intimidating. It had several boxes to fill out, a password to create, enter and re-enter, and many asterisks which usually isn’t good. Then there was a testimonial, a confirmation box, “privacy and cookie policies,” and finally the Sign Up button at the bottom. Whew!

“The marketing team noticed the structure of the trial sign-up page meant that while Life Annuity Specialist’s content was generating a lot of interest and clicks, the sign-up completion rate was low,” wrote Chelsea Bona, marketing associate at Life Annuity Specialist, in her entry that won a 2019 first-place SIPAward for Best Success Story. “The hypothesis was if prospects could get to the content quicker by filling out fewer fields, and saw a more modern-looking page they’d be more likely to trust, Life Annuity Specialist would see more trial sign-ups.”

And so a new trial sign-up page was created—a small white box over the larger homepage. The box contained 5 lines:

  • The Life Annuity Specialist logo
  • “Welcome to Life Annuity Specialist”
  • “Enjoy a free, full-access trial of all articles for 30 days”
  • [box] “confirm I have read agree to the terms and conditions”
  • A [Start Reading] button

“The team saw an immediate change, with an unprecedented 584 trial sign-ups that closed three sales from the one-click trial marketing campaign,” wrote Bona. “This marketing technique fundamentally changed how all Life Annuity Specialist campaigns have been run since. More importantly, it launched the product to more than double the number of subscribers it had at the start of the year, making the product an undeniable success.”

The subject of free trials recently came up on the SIPA Discussion Forum. Rob Lawson of Credit Today LLC pointed to SurveyGizmo’s trial page. They invite you to “test drive any feedback collection plan risk free. No credit card required. To test-drive SurveyGizmo, select the feedback collection solution that’s best for you (Full Access, Professional, Collaborator).” (Each has a “Start Free Trial” button.)

Jay Campbell of The Company Dime wrote that their “one-time trial is about giving [their customers] a chance to see what we can do and maybe getting them on our free email list… Once they’re getting the emails, hopefully there will be another article down the line that they’ll want to pay to access.”

Another respondent wrote that instead of free trials, “offer free webinars that require people to register. Then you have their email address and can continue to cultivate them. A free two-week trial is a great reward for those who have watched the webinar.” (SIPA has a webinar coming up next Thursday titled, How to Develop Free Webinars and Other Virtual Events that Generate Qualified Leads—and Convert Them to Paying Customers. Register here.)

Here are more reasons for Life Annuity Specialist’s success:

It reaches an underserved audience. Life Annuity Specialist was officially launched in 2018 as a full publication from the Financial Times. It’s the first business intelligence service that’s written for executives at life insurance carriers and annuity providers—an underserved group—as opposed to insurance agents

It’s designed as a one-stop source for original reporting and efficient aggregation of industry news.

The editorial team was fortified, adding a managing editor and an associate editor. “By expanding the editorial team, Life Annuity Specialist had experts who could contribute more original stories from the product manufacturer’s perspective.”

They looked at what subscribers were reading and doubled down. The editorial team monitored what was being read most and shifted the content focus to what subscribers showed most interest in, helping to increase readership.

They added new elements. Content offerings expanded to include charts and graphics, Q&As with CEOs, and webcasts, which brought brand awareness to new audiences. The first webcast alone led to 95 new trialists and partnerships with prominent insurance organizations like LIMRA.

A sales director and marketing associate were brought in.

LunchByte | Office of Education Technology with Guest Jake Steel

by Uncategorized

This episode of LunchByte features host – Jill Abbott, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of ETIN as she speaks with Jamie Basham.

Host

Jill Abbott is currently the Senior Vice President and Managing Director of ETIN. Her passion centers on education and helping people reach their maximum potential. With this inspiration and insights gained from a comprehensive background in education reform, personalized learning, assessment, curriculum design, and policy and program development. She is a seasoned executive in education holding local, regional, state, national, and international roles in improving education through transformative practices.

 

Special Guest

Jake Steel is the Deputy Director of the Office of Educational Technology and the Senior Adviser over K-12 Education in the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to joining the Department, Jake was appointed by the President as a White House Fellow at the Domestic Policy Council. A former math teacher in Oklahoma City, Jake focused on closing the achievement gap through personalized learning and technology. Jake earned a B.S. in communications from Brigham Young University–Idaho and an M.S. in education from Johns Hopkins University.

 

The LunchByte is the podcast for the Education Division, ETIN, of SIIA This series provides you with access to leaders in the education industry and private enterprise.

Learn from leaders what:

·        The new topics in education are,

·        They are thinking about for the next wave of technology,

·        The greatest trends in sales and marketing involve, and Much more.

Zoom-1.jpg

Delegating and Hitting ‘Pause’ Can Both Provide More Valuable Time

by Media

A year ago, Fast Company posted an article titled How to Redesign Your Days to Give You Back a Few Extra Hours Every Week. The author listed five categories where we can make changes:

Quit Something
Limit Something
Pause Something
Delegate Something
Add Something

Contemplating these five areas is a good way to start the new year. Let’s take a closer look.

For Quit Something, they wrote “Quit a recurring meeting. Quit a committee. Quit Facebook. Quit Candy Crush.” Facebook and Asana (which was founded by a Facebook co-founder) both have a company-wide policy of no meetings on Wednesdays. You can also quit a poor habit or policy. Diversifying your speakers might be a good place to start. Take some extra time to do research to find new speakers for your next webinar, podcast or event. With those new speakers might just come a new audience. I visited an art exhibit yesterday titled The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today. And you can just see how the diverse content attracts—and engages—a diverse audience.

For Limit Something, how about email? Almost 85% percent of the people surveyed by Adobe Insights check their email before they get to work, and nearly a quarter take a look before they even get out of bed in the morning. People text or check personal email while watching TV (60%), talking on the phone (35%), working out (16%), and yes—I see it more every day—driving (14%). “Why is email so ingrained in our lives?” Kristin Naragon of Adobe Campaign asks. “One reason may be that it’s so manageable—we can sort, file, filter, and generally get things done.”

For the Pause Something, they wrote: “[Go] on a walk in the middle of the day. [Give] yourself permission to run an errand during your lunch break. Stopping for a moment to assert your ability to do the non-urgent reduces the sense that everything has to happen at a frenetic pace, and that there’s no time to slow down.” Writes prominent author and speaker Daniel Pink from his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing: “Research shows us that social breaks are better than solo breaks—taking a break with somebody else is more restorative than doing it on your own.” A trip to the office kitchen—where there is always someone—stimulates my thought processes. Or, if you’re home, finding a community at the coffee shop.

Delegate Something might have the most potential of any category. I’m guilty of this myself. I run a couple local Meetup groups for the arts and volunteering here in the Washington, D.C. area. One is quite large and the other much smaller, so naturally I spend much of my free time on the larger one. A woman messaged me and said she noticed there isn’t much activity on the smaller one. Could she help?

My first reaction was, “Oh I have this plan for that group and I will implement it soon. So I will tell her that and say thanks.” And then I recalled that I was saying this six months ago and nothing has happened. I have continued to just pay attention to the bigger group and only think about what I want to do with the smaller one.

Someone was offering to help me, nothing was getting done, and I had to think about it? “As you plan your day, ask yourself: Is this something that I really need to do myself, or could someone else do this instead?” Fast Company wrote.

For Add Something, are you doing push alerts? “Push alerts show up in spaces where the interruption is hard to ignore: your phone’s locked screen while you’re trying to fall asleep, your smartwatch while you’re in a meeting, a popup while you’re answering an email,” writes Rachel Schallom, deputy editor for digital at Fortune Media, in NiemanLab’s excellent Our Predictions for Journalism 2020 series. “Long story short: If someone doesn’t want to receive a push alert, they’ll change their settings. An underrated metric in measuring an alert strategy’s success is simply the number of subscribers a push notification list has. Editors can also look at the lifecycle of an alert subscriber: How long do they stay subscribed? How often do they change their settings?”