Turn Dead Links and Expired Offers into Profits
What happens to retired campaign offers? That’s the question we are going to answer today and by the end of this article you’ll be turning your out of date campaign offers into newfound profits.
While this post was written right after the crush of the 2019 holiday sales season, in January 2019 – it offers some great advice for adventure brands to proactively maximize the effectiveness of your current holiday campaigns for this 2021 holiday season, in two ways:
- Set up your “end of campaign tasks” now on your campaign schedule: Either automate the update or trigger a task reminder to go in on the day your campaigns end and update your landing pages for “evergreen” information so your latecomer traffic stays engaged with your brand.
- Repurpose and Reuse Old Campaigns into New Ones: Find all your outdated campaigns and landing pages for specials and offers and see what you can repurpose now to drive traffic to your current campaigns (think redirects, new links), OR if you don’t have a 2021 holiday campaign, update your old template and launch it much faster.
Here are the details from our original January 8, 2019 post:
So, during this holiday season, many outdoor adventure companies have made one-time or limited-time offers like 30% off next year’s raft trip or a gift certificate offer to most active rock climbing customers. In most cases, this will require the brand to create an email sent to existing customers and prospect lists, a landing page or squeeze page with the offer, a Facebook ad, and maybe other forms of traffic drivers like a PPC ad or display ad on relevant websites. There is a lot of effort and thought put into designing and implementing an offer like this to make it successful. However, one question we see often overlooked is “WHAT’S NEXT?”
Let’s paint an experience…
Step One: You email one of your best customers a great offer to get a one day downhill ski pass for $25. This is regularly $69 and a great holiday offer that expires in 3 days.
Step Two: Your customer opens the email 5 days later because she was busy with work and scrambling to get gifts for the kids leaving her no time for email.
Step Three: Your high-value customer crosses her fingers in hopes that if she clicks the link in the email that you’ll have extended the offer because she’d like to pick up a day pass for herself and her husband.
Step Four: Your customer clicks the link and finds the offer page but none of the buttons work and she is locked out of the offer… wha wha wha…
That stinks on so many levels. But what are YOU, the Ski Resort, able to do?
Certainly, you can’t leave the offers up and live forever: this is a fact of life and people will understand that, for the most part. However, how could you make this experience 100X better for the customer, reduce incoming calls for an expired special, and put a few dollars in your pocket at the same time?
It really all comes in the answer to the question of what’s next for the customer.
Let me share a screenshot to a page I came across recently and was the inspiration for this post.
As you can see, there is a very nice email pointing the visitor to a sparse landing page with the offer of a $25 lift ticket. Of course, as I am very busy during the flurry of holiday campaigns, I never saw the offer until after the expiration date. In visiting the page, the ‘Add to Cart’ button was simply disabled. Too bad for me, I guess. 🙁
What could have been done better, and why?
Cause: Email was opened late by a valued customer.
Effect: Customer is unhappy. Ski resort loses an opportunity. Customer may go seeking specials from competitors.
How about this: instead of a landing page with a dead offer we answer, “What’s Next?”
Option One: Change the Wording, Add Value
Maybe a slight change to the landing page that says, “Thank you so much for your visit and we are sorry but this offer has expired. Please check out our specials page [LINK] for updated offers and our events page [LINK] for upcoming special events. “
This would:
- Help manage the disappointment of the customer.
- Potentially keep the customer engaged with your content.
- Generate awareness for future events.
- Increase potential revenue by linking the customer to more specials or more information to continue the path to purchase.
Option Two: Redirect to a Relevant Page
Don’t want to use option one for some reason? At the very minimum, you should be redirecting the link www.YOUROLDOFFERHERE.com to www.YOURSPECIALSPAGE.com OR www.YOURNEWOFFERHERE.com. This is taking the customer from what would be a closed loop with no ability to convert back to an open loop where that customer can then engage and possibly do business with you.
Emails, Social Ads, Search, and Inbound Links Live On!
It’s really easy (lazy marketing) to just let an offer end, die, and fade. How many customers are you really going to upset? How many people will really get to that old offer page? Well, let us give you some possibilities.
Running a Facebook Ad?
Every Facebook ad is a post and every post lives on forever. The more successful the campaign, the more engaged people are, and the more shares you get just increases what is called “The Network Effect”. That single ad can go from a post on your page to a post on the streams of many others and we’ve seen people clicking these links for MONTHS after a campaign is effectively over. Don’t waste the traffic!
Using email marketing?
While 80% of your email traffic will open within the first week there is almost always a straggling 20% who are late to the game. Don’t waste the traffic!
Is your Landing Page coming up in search?
Most do! People are always searching for specials and if you have old landing pages with dead links and closed loops there is a possibility that you’re driving significant amounts of free traffic to a page that adds no value. Don’t waste the traffic!
Buying display ads on relevant websites?
Yep, you may have purchased an ad for the timeframe specified but many times website admins are asleep at the wheel and will continue to run an ad past its end date. It happens and these free impressions will often drive additional visitors. Don’t waste the traffic!
Has anyone blogged about or shared your amazing offer on Twitter or other social media sites?
Those links live on forever and can drive significant visitor numbers well beyond the expiration date of your offer. Don’t waste the traffic!
Got it? If you have any questions feel free to contact us and we can help you with strategy or convert your old dead links into revenue!
