It’s a really simple secret, one of those open secrets that experts will see coming way before I get to it.
It has to do with attrition rates.
See, we focus a lot of energy in getting more new people in the door, the digital door specifically, because it’s more cost effective.
We want more leads, more sales, and our blogs with their 1000 visitors a day are just not going to cut it.
But what if you’re missing something huge in that equation?
If just 1000 unique visitors to your blog each day were unique, and none of them were repeat visitors, you could have had at least 360,500 opportunities to turn a visitor into a lead and generate a sale every year.
Even with a 50% bounce rate, that’s 180,250.
Even at a 1% conversion rate (lower than the cited average for sales from first time visitors) where are the 1820 sales that go with those folks?
This looks now, I realize, like an argument for giving up blogging. But stay with me a few more seconds.
First, let’s talk about what an attrition rate, or churn rate, is.
What Does Your Attrition Rate have to do with Your Marketing?
In every day context, the term “attrition rate” refers to the percentage of employee losses over a set period of time. You may have also heard this term from people who use continuity marketing or have membership sites.
In our discussion today, it is the the often ignored rate of people you lose every month in your digital marketing plan.
Why is it important?
Because who cares if you generate 10,000 visitors a second if none of them ever buys anything?
It’s Not Just About Driving Subscriptions
We tend to think of our websites as digital marketing buckets, holding whatever leads they bring us. In truth, the majority of sites lose more people than they keep.
Some who realize start putting subscription boxes within their blogs posts, in the sidebar, and even in the header of their sites to combat this.
This week try two things in your marketing.
First, run every metrics program you have to figure out, in the last month, where you lost people.
When did they unsubscribe and why? If you can capture people on their way out, look them up and ask them point blank.
Second, devise a plan that boosts marketing to the area where you lose the least people.
Don’t try to fix anything yet, just see if you can make up for the amount of people you lost this time last month, or the last time conditions were similar. Sometimes manpower challenges make it easier or more efficient to shift some resources to what’s working before fixing what’s not.
The third step you can do at the same time as the second if you have the staff or the time. But that is to isolate the points where you lost people and figure out how to fix them.
Do split-tests. Test everything. And most importantly, ask your visitors, customers, subscribers, anyone you’re in danger of losing.
How do you know who you’re in danger of losing? If people are unsubscribing because of message four in your newsletter series, swap out that message with the next most successful one.
If you are in that situation right this second, examining your attrition causes and rates could make that worst case scenario a success story. We’re going to come back to how you and I can do this together, this coming week.
