Update
Thrive Content Builder and Thrive Landing pages have been replaced by Thrive Architect, which now has 375 pre-designed page templates and you can preview them all in our landing pages gallery.
It's simple: the more people on your mailing list actually open your emails and click on the links inside, the more valuable the list is.
In today's video, I share my personally tried and tested method for ensuring highly engaged email subscribers before they even sign up for my list. Sound strange? Watch the video to see the exact method I use.
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I've created a downloadable PDF cheat-sheet and summary of this method for you. You can download it instantly, right here:
You can find the templates that were used as examples in this video in the "Foundation" landing page set in Thrive Architect (formerly called Thrive Landing Pages.)
To display comments on the welcome page, I recommend either Disqus comments or Facebook comments.​ To use Facebook comments, you'll also have to create a Facebook app for your website (it's a lot easier than it sounds and you can find a guide here).
​If you have any questions or thoughts about today's video, please leave a comment.
Why do I have a feeling you have the same apartment I had in Varna.
Eugene Skyler street?
Nope. 🙂
As usual… very good, Shane. Keep going. And thanks for your efforts.
Dogan
Thank you, Dogan.
Another great tutorial Shane. Love the rationale for the way this should be used and the “over and above” way you go about helping us use your products
Thank you, Mark. My pleasure to shed some light on the thinking that goes into our templates.
WOW! You never cease to impress Shane. The quality of what you share is second-to-none. I can honestly say that I continually get more value (for free) from your blog than I have from expensive products I’ve bought.
It’s so nice to be learning from someone who actually does practice what he preaches 🙂
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Kevin! I’ll do my best to keep the value coming.
You are the best. I really enjoyed this video, and I will implement it right away on a new site I am about to launch. You are a life saver.
That’s very cool. I’m very happy to see you run with this method right away, Gregory!
Video?….
Well I would if I could coz I know that I should but my face looks like wood or more like a pud.
What the H*** have a go just to see if I show that my ‘thing’ is worth just a look.
I’ll work and I’ll train so I look more like Shane but I doubt my success
coz I don’t have the skill so I’ll end up going back to my book.
Your aged follower who thought youwere an Irish German….remember?
Peter
Hello Peter,
Nice poem! 🙂
I think a lot of people who claim to have a “face for radio” are probably not half as bad as they think, on video.
OK Shane, you’ve got to stop this. You’re making my life difficult.
When I get an email with useful information that I’ll want to refer to again I star the email.
I’m at the point now that every email from you is getting a star!
Thanks for sending such valuable tips time after time.
Haha, thank you very much! I hope my emails will continue to deserve a star in your inbox.
Hi Shane,
This was another great peace of Mind Changing Content. Many Things are to do but this is really simple but more Powerful Concept as all these Shortcuts coming from around. Simply a long term Strategie for more Success. Thanks for that!
Thank you, Joerg! I’m happy to know that you’re getting good value out of the content.
Brilliant. Start the relationship building immediately with pictures, name, signature, video. I’ve never heard it presented this way, but it makes perfect sense. These instructional videos are outstanding Shane. I hope you keep them coming. Big fan. – Eric
Thank you very much, Eric. Yes, more videos like this are planned.
You give away so many of your tips and tricks for free, Shane – this is Gold!!! Really enjoying all the updates. Your content is super high quality, as is the video and sound quality. Professional and incredibly helpful. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, Tim! The strategy shown here really is very valuable and I’ve been using it in my business for a long time. I hope you’ll get the same benefit out of it as well.
Great professional advice to take action on. Shane has already trained me to look for his emails. LOL.
Thank you, Ron! Glad you enjoyed the video.
Awesome advice Shane… an email roadmap that makes so much sense.
Confirms the reason I always open your emails immediately and watch your video. And save your video in my Shane vault for future reference. I always anticipate value.
Thank you for confirming the method works, John. 🙂
Shane,
I just wanted to tell you how impressed I am with your products and your training. It is awesome!
I am including a link to your products in my membership site as I believe you have something very special here that can help so many people.
And I am super impressed with the new page templates! You listened to your customers and over-delivered! Hats off to you!
Thanks,
Sally
Hello Sally,
Thank you for your comment! And thank you for supporting us by linking from your membership site. I really appreciate that!
Shane, the way your deliver is awesome… had to learn a lot of things from you. These are not just golden nuggets but each of your video is a complete golden meal 🙂
Thank you so much 🙂
Haha, thank you very much, Karim!
Absolutely fantastic information, Shane! This method feels just right for how I want to relate with my audience. It’s a solid way to start to develop a real relationship with them. There are too many websites where you just have no idea who is really behind them. Keep up the great work!
P.S. I’m spreading the word about your great products!
Thank you very much for helping us get the word out, Debra!
Another great tutorial Shane! I love what you are doing and how you add extra value. I stay with Thrive themes because of the awesome support from your team and the quality of your posts and tutorials. I knew the sequence but just adding that photo of the face will make a huge difference, just like you said. So thanks again!
Thank you, Katerina! I’ll do my best to continue adding value just like this.
Excellent Shane! Thank you so much, constantly providing great useable content with fantastic products. Keep up the good work:)
Thank you for your comment, Stephen! It’s my pleasure.
Hey Shane,
Is it possible for several optin pages to share the same “please confirm” page?
Yes, just point the confirmation URL for the forms in your autoresponder to the same place.
Forehead smack. Thanks, Paul.
No problem 🙂
Have a look at this Johnn – http://thrivethemes.com/split-test-landing-pages/
Shane mentions the value of unique pages for the purpose of split-testing and conversion tracking.
This is a fair point as well and thanks for bringing it up, Kevin! If you use Thrive Themes, an easy way to do this is to use the page cloning feature. So you can have identical confirmation pages, but tracking separate conversions.
Note that this is not necessary for the tracking, I just find it’s easier to set up, especially since it’s usually just a handful of pages.
Thanks Kevin and Shane. Good points, and I was not aware of the clone tool. There’s a lot of features under the hood with your software. 🙂
I love the bite sized snippets, so much more useful than the constant marketing emails that your contemporaries keep hammering my inbox with.
I bet your unsubscribe rate is a lot lower in comparison to them as you are adding genuine value with these mini lessons.
Thanks for the hard work.
Thank you, Glen! Glad you’re enjoying the content. As for unsubscribe rates: I’ve never compared what I do to a “hard selling” alternative, so I’m not sure. Not everyone likes content-focused emails, either. But the way I see it, this is a good way of separating out the real fans.
Shane,
Thanks for the awesome content…again.
Cheers
Mike
Portland, Oregon
Thanks for your comment, Mike! Glad you enjoyed it. 🙂
Really excellent, as usual, Shane. Thanks for all the knowledge you are spreading!
One question. You mention in Step 5 to ‘send your new subscribers to a welcome page’. Are you suggesting that the email itself looks like the welcome page with a still from the video, and when they click the image and go to the landing page they can play the video and see the comments box, or would the email that you use to get them to the landing page be something different?
The welcome page is about the actual page you send them to. The email will look like whatever you want the email to look like. In most cases, keeping the email simple is a good idea, although adding an image to represent the video can increase clicks, in some cases.
Good and useful info, Shane.
Am wondering if the combo of Thrive Themes + Content Builder trumps LeadPages, if one also uses Google Analytics.
If so, this is a strong value add, given the $40+/month fee to use LeadPages.
Have never used LP, so may be a bit clueless here?
I use both Thrive themes + content builder and leadpages. I have an enterprise account with leadpages. You can most likely do all you need to do with Thrive themes. I use them each for different purposes. If you are using it just for yourself you can just use Thrivethemes but if you work with different clients who need these services I feel like I have to offer them different options.
Thank you for this reply, Katerina.
To add to that, I’d say Thrive Landing Pages isn’t a direct replacement for LeadPages. They have some features we don’t have and they also (currently) have more templates since they have a head-start of several years, on us.
I think what you need to consider most importantly are the most fundamental differences between LeadPages and Thrive Landing Pages.
LeadPages is a hosted solution. This means that some things are more convenient (no WordPress installation necessary, for example), but you also don’t own your pages (if you cancel your subscription, all the pages are lost). Also, the templates are very “fixed”. You can only change some details about them.
Thrive Landing Pages is WordPress plugin, which means everything runs on your own site. It also means that you actually host and own all the pages you create with it.
The biggest difference in my opinion is that with Thrive Landing Pages, you have 100% freedom in editing the pages. You can change the layout, add or remove any element, etc.
To add to what Shane said about Lead Pages vs. Thrive Landing Pages, Lead Pages does not integrate well if you have your WordPress files in a sub-directory.
Most folks will have WordPress installed in the root. But many will also have multiple installs or installs in a non-root folder. And Lead Pages doesn’t work well for this. Even with their WP plugin. Support said that’s just the way it is.
Another thing is, once you build a landing page you like and that converts well in Thrive, you can continue to duplicate, improve, and re-use it. You can do this is Lead Pages too.
But my rambly point is, you don’t need 10,000 templates in a library. You need just a couple of ones that work and you continue to test and improve.
A mistake I see is Lead Pages being used more and more as a CMS. It’s tempting. But that’s a bungee trap I’d avoid, because your content is now split up, LP is not integrated with site search, and for various other factors.
Last, I’m taking a page out of the book of videofruit.com. Go out and find landing pages you think are great – with conversion data if you can get it, just approach the site owners on social and ask – and copy their layouts. Taking winning formulas and put your own content in them. This gives you practice and experience building with Thrive LPs, experience analyzing and learning about what makes effective LPs, and as Shane said, gives you total control over your own site and business.
My two cents.
What can I say? I love both Thrive themes and lead pages. I use lead pages a lot because I don’t have the time to build out pages in wordpress as often as I would need to in order to create squeeze pages. I like the speed of leadpages hosting. I am an affiliate of both products but will never ask someone to buy a product that is not a good fit for them. I use bluehost for WP and they are much slower to load than leadpages pages. Leadpages is also now almost fully customizable.
I love the idea of being able to build whatever you want with thrive themes so for a main website it is great. To take the time to build out squeeze pages, not so much. I spend about 5 minutes to build a squeeze page on leadpages that takes me about 5 hours to do on thrive themes. I would love to have more of a drag and drop being able to see it in real time without having to refresh wp all the time. I personally am not that fond of WP itself because of the time it takes to go into the dashboard, etc. As a blogger, I use scribefire to get my content on my blogs which is way faster than the WP dashboard. If I want to argue semantics, the content you put on a thrive theme on WP is still not really yours because if you don’t pay your hosting company you will also lose the content unless of course you have backed it up and have a clone of it somewhere, which I know for a surety most people don’t have. 🙂 Running your own site is great for DIYers but for larger companies that is not always the best solution. Just my 2 ¢. 🙂
Nicely done Shane. I have been personalizing capture pages and welcome pages but your systematic approach and the group of pages available in Thrive is going to make that easier and more comprehensive, and make me more consistent.
Thank you, Terrence! If we can make an already effective process easier for you to implement, we’ve done our jobs. 🙂
I love your tutorials, always useful and straightforward without any of the usual IM BS!
I Tweeted the post, but the PDF cheatsheet did not unlock for download. How can I get that?
Shane, you should add the like comments feature here. There are great comments on your blog that I and I am sure others would like to “like”.:)
Shane, THANK YOU! I’ve implement the changes you’ve suggested and the ideas from the RAPID Landing Page Building Course. I’ve had a few people check out my new subscriber flow and everyone was impressed! Your tips have really helped with my copy editing as well!
Here’s what the page looks like:
http://eatmovebe.com/healthy-meals-and-snacks-ebook/
I have a book for sale on my site and I made the page with TCB, but now I need to re-do it, based on the RAPID method (the page is a bit too large for a $10 book).
That is so awesome, Darren! I love that you put this into action straight away and published a landing page almost immediately after I published the mini-course.
So much awesomeness that just keeps coming… thank you so much for the tip !
Thanks, Jenny! Glad you liked this video. 🙂
Hello Shane, You are making a profound effect on me with your sincere teaching. Every time I watch something from you, Shane, I feel more confident to continue venturing forth in my missionary work with my blog mission. Thank you!
Thank you very much, John!
Shane enjoyed your video!! I will be using the strategy you spoke of. I have a question for you I have Thrive content builder with thrive themes. How do I get a certain questioned answered. Please let me know?
Lenny
Hi Shane. Thanks fore this post.
Can you suggest me how or where I can make my own digital signature? Or the best way is copy from the paper? Tks anyway.
The easiest thing to do is to find a hand-written font (e.g. on Google Fonts) and use that to write your name. You can also try this site.
Hi Shane, the audio goes out on this tutorial at about the 1:08 time range. I also don’t see a link for the downloadable pdf cheat sheet mentioned. I’m noticing the comments below don’t comment on this so I’m wondering if this is something that has been changed or redirected? I’m trying to understand how to link a pdf ebook to a Thrive call to action (sidebar) widget. This is the closest info that I’ve found but…as I said, isn’t available due to the audio problem. Suggestions? Thanks!
Hello Lisa,
Seems that something broke on this post. I’ve updated it and switched out the video. Please give it another try.
Hi Shane. Great video, but just wondering. There is a paragraph “I’ve created a downloadable PDF cheat-sheet. You can unlock it instantly, right here:” However, the link to the PDF is not there – is there anything I am missing?
Hello Marko,
You should see a “share to unlock” widget in the post, where you can get access to the PDF by sharing the post. Is it not displaying for you?
Shane – interesting, it looks like the share to unlock widget has a browser issue. It does not show on my Firefox, IE nor on Safari, but it was displayed on Chrome.
hummm … Shane… isn’t this the video that goes with the flyer story?
I just wanted to make sure you didn’t intend to embed a different video in here.
Apologies, I do comment a lot right now because I am catching up with your videos. You’re asking to comment to someone who loves engaging.
Mr. Melaugh, people don’t impress me easily…actually, I would qualify myself as very picky and do my best to be patient and nice with my outsource people that I love. You impress me! I fell on my back to see how much you stay present with us after we purchase your product. Well, I hope you don’t plan to retire too quick. I command you for this remarkable follow-up! That, by itself, sends a strong message and keeps people with you. I gotta emulate that! However, I’m sort of, kind of like you. It’s refreshing to see someone else doing it! I love engaging… hahaha… does it show?
Well, if you’ll excuse me, I am still on my back working on my way up … gotta run to my website and get a few things rehashed!
À bientôt Shane!
Louise Grogan
thank you soooooo much for the great video, i will try that immediately.
and it saved a lot of time: i just have to follow the instructions instead of thinking of myself 😉
Good stuff!
Thanks!
Thanks for explaining this out. This is exactly the problem I am facing now with my subscribers list…
Hi there, thanks for these nice tips. How can we configure an “after-share” message like you did in this post ? I mean to unlock a specific content like the PDF of this post after sharing. Thanks for your help.
I really enjoy the content. This stuff is gold. Can’t wait to get started with my funnels
Thank you Shane, this is exactly what I needed!