Rather than having a blog that looks the same for everyone who lands on your site, having one that changes depending on who’s visiting it will get you a lot more sales and opt-ins. This isn’t science fiction.
It’s an actual tactic known as onsite retargeting.
In this post, we’re going to take a look at a couple of tools which do that: ConvertFlow and RightMessage.
If your blog could change to suit the individual visitors that land on your site based on what they are ready to act on, instead of showing the same, static call to action across the entire blog, you would be able to custom tailor all your content to each specific visitor.
Ideally, your blog would be strategically set up, from the foundation to the top, as a content marketing environment – then, it would react according to who your visitor is, as well as the nature of their intent.
For Example:
- It shows different CTAs for people who haven’t subscribed than the ones who have.
- It shows different CTAs based on what you already know about your visitor, including demographics, interests, and so on.
- If someone has already bought something from you, they won’t be shown CTAs for that product, but they will be shown something else instead.
- Targeted offers will be shown to people based on the things they have already purchased in order for your blog to actually help move them along the sales funnel.
For the majority of bloggers who are seeking to implement more developed marketing strategies in their businesses, it’s a huge step up to go from an email list provider that is newsletter-oriented (such as Aweber, GetResponse, or Mailchimp) to one that provides a powerful marketing automation platform like ActiveCampaign or Drip.
Likewise, it’s a step up for bloggers to move from general opt-in form managers and plugins like OptinMonster and Thrive Leads and step into a retargeting platform that is onsite.
But what it does is it essentially turns your blog into an efficient and effective marketing platform.
When you present the right offers, at the right time, to the right people, you’re able to significantly increase your conversions. You can do this using your blog by simply adding the right tools to your blog marketing kit.
Two of the best options on the market right now are ConvertFlow and RightMessage.
Both of these tools accomplish pretty much the same thing, and they are equally powerful and effective when it comes to onsite retargeting.
However, they work in two very different ways.
Let’s Start With RightMessage:
The beauty of this platform is that it allows you to edit the actual elements on your website, as opposed to simply adding new elements to it.
There are two main sections in the tool:
1. Segment:
You use this to set up the different ways in which you can segment your visitors. This includes sets of questions that you can ask in order to collect information from your audience.
2. Personalize:
Here you can start using the segmentation information you collected by changing the site according to the data.
Segment Section
Under ‘Segment’, first set up your funnel stages to help you track where prospects and customers are in your sales cycle.
For instance, you may have the following stages:
- Anonymous
- Subscriber
- Course Buyer
- Member
- Coaching Client
- (or whatever makes sense for yoursite)
You can get really granular with the way you define these things on RightMessage. You can tap into your CRM (customer relationship management) and access the data within in order to ascertain where those people currently are in the sales cycle.
Accessing tags within your CRM is something that tools of this caliber do easily, and RightMessage can also handle custom field data.
This means that you can tap into any other tools that are currently integrated with your site (eg, the tools you use at the sales end) and use that data to segment your audience easily.
Moving on…
After setting up the funnel stages, you can now set up the questions that will help you segment your audience in different ways. You have total control over who sees the questions, and where they are displayed on your site.
Each time a visitor answers a question, you’re collecting valuable intel about them.
This can then be synced back to the CRM you’re currently using, allowing you to trigger targeted automation and email campaigns for specific people based on how they answered.
‘Personalize’ Section
This is the fun part, where you start using the data for onsite targeting.
One of the basic features in RightMessage is called RightBar. It’s a sticky bar right at the top of your site that you can customize based on the stage of the funnel that your visitor is currently in.
If you have a membership site, for instance, you can show a different RightBar to a monthly paid member than you do an annual or lifetime member.
A simple, but handy use for this feature would be to use it to show your monthly members an offer to upgrade to an annual membership.
While this tool is super cool, it is still a little limited. This is particularly evident when you have a need to use more detailed customization. Also, it only has one set of bars for use.
Of course, the company is continually improving their product, and there’s talk that they will be expanding into something they call RightCTA, which will move beyond the current top bars they are using into other types of CTAs that have a lot more flexibility.
When this happens, it will put RightMessage on par with ConvertFlow with regards to what it can do. But for now, ConvertFlow has a distinct advantage over RightMessage.
Let’s Take a Look at What ConvertFlow Can Do.
ConvertFlow
As previously mentioned, both tools have the same goal of personalizing your site and retargeting your visitors onsite, but they do so in very different ways.
RightMessage changes your actual website based on who’s on it. ConvertFlow achieves the same goal, but it does so by using embedded widgets.
So in other words, ConvertFLow only adds to the site, while RightMessage actually changes the site. There are also some features that are unique to ConvertFlow.
ConvertFlow’s platform is broken down as follows:
- Calls to Action: Here you can build and manage the various calls to action that you use across your site.
- Flows: This unique feature allows you to set your CTAs into various structured campaigns to walk prospects through to specific goals.
- Broadcasts: You can send out high-priority calls to action that override everything else.
- Insights: This is reporting on all your conversions.
- Contacts: These are real records of all your contacts on the site. It includes their information, avatar photo, and all the data amassed from social media accounts and other public channels.
You have several options when creating a call to action:
- Embedded CTA
- Hook Popup
- Overlay Popup
- Sticky Bar
- Landing Page
You can already see that ConvertFlow allows you a lot more flexibility whereas RightMessage only has the one ‘sticky bar’.
The Embedded CTA is a very cool feature that lets you target specific areas on your site with effective CTAs.
For instance, you can set up CTAs to display in the following areas using DIV code with special Classes:
- Sidebar
- Content
- Section
- Post Footer
- Content Upgrades
This is a great way of helping you to customize certain areas of your website to fit with your overall site structure.
So, if you decide to show your CTA within your blog post content, whenever the criteria for displaying the call to action are met, it will show up within that particular blog post.
You have a lot of options when it comes to display criteria, including:
- Geographic location (country, city), device types (mobile or desktop), Page URLs, etc.
- Visitor history (et. CTAs completed, segmenting information, tags, etc.)
- Tags within your CRM (you can control calls to action based on the tags in your CRM)
- WordPress targeting (via posts, pages, categories, logged-in status, and so on)
The wide range of options means that you can actually get quite granular with your control of CTAs.
For example, you can display a lead magnet on all your blog posts in one specific category of your blog to target that particular segment of readers.
Then, if they’ve already opted in for that lead magnet, they are shown a different CTA. Also, if your CRM shows that they’ve already bought a product, then you can show them a targeted offer that is closely related to the category.
As you develop this on your site, you could wind up with a bunch of CTAs for different things. And that’s where Campaign Flows comes in.
You can use it to organize everything at once, and also to globally track performance. Flows allows you to easily organize CTAs into groups in the different stages of your lead cycle.
Here is a typical example of what it would look like:
- Anonymous visitor
- Email subscriber
- Becomes qualified lead (either by viewing pricing page, sales page, or on a webinar, etc.)
- Buys a product
- Buys more expensive upsell, or joins a membership
This is a simple structure for a sales funnel.
But when you set goals using the flow feature in ConvertFlow, you’ll be able to effectively track the stage of the buying cycle that your visitors are currently in – and therefore control the calls to action that they see.
Pros and Cons Of ConvertFlow and RightMessage
ConvertFlow Pros:
- There’s plenty of flexibility when it comes to the types of CTAs that you can use on your website
- For those who use WordPress as a major part of their business, there’s granular integration
- Lets you manage calls to actions into groups for organized flows
- Offers real-time stat reporting (RightMessage has a delay of 24 hours)
RightMessage Pros:
- Extremely granular integrations with CRM system, including using custom field data in addition to tags
- Lets you personalize your actual site as opposed to just widgets and sections
ConvertFlow Cons:
- You can’t edit on-site content to personalize it. Right now this feature is exclusive to RightMessage
- The CTA editing interface (while powerful) is a little clunky
- There is no guided onboarding, and there’s a lack of real-world case studies to show you how to set everything up. RightMessage also has the same issue
RightMessage Cons:
- Highly limited when compared to ConvertFlow as actual widgets are currently limited to the simple RightBar (but it’s important to note that they are gearing to close this gap soon)
- 24-hour delay in stat reporting
- No onboarding process to help newbies get started
Summary
Both these tools are very powerful. The main differences are in the way they work, and also in their pricing.
ConvertFlow starts out for free, and if your visitors are under 500 each month, and if you only need to generate leads, then you can use it for free. However, after 500 visitors a month, packages start at $29 per month.
You only get the retargeting options with the $99 per month package.
RightMessage prices are dependent on your site traffic, and they start at $19 per month. That is the Survey plan for those with less than 10,000 unique visitors each month.
With this plan, you only get the ability to ask your audience questions to learn more about them. Personally, I don’t see the need for that plan as there are tons of other free methods of achieving the same thing.
The RightMessage plan that would give you access to all the features comes in at $149 per month. But when compared to ConvertFlow, you get the same traffic for just $99 per month.
Price-wise, ConvertFlow takes the cup, but as previously mentioned, there are other things to take into account before making your choice as these two tools work in totally different ways.
They each have a unique set of capabilities that will appeal to people with different types of businesses.
The Bottom Line
Using tools of this caliber is not a necessity for every business or blog, but it is something that more advanced businesses can look into using.
If you’re a solo blogger or have a new business, then you don’t need something quite so advanced as RightMessage or ConvertFlow.
But, as your business and blog grow, the type of marketing automation capability that you can get from these tools is something that you will have to implement into your blog marketing strategy in order to maximize all your marketing efforts when moving people through your sales funnel individually.
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PlanetBizOp.com
->Steven
Updated: Originally published January 17th 2019
