We've been running several tests recently to see if we can take advantage of offline advertising to drive online sales with scaleable results.

We started by placing simple classified adverts in niche publications, and the national press, for several different products and had a number of different offers to tempt people to our websites.

The offers ranged from the simple 'free report online' to the 'Claim your free CD or DVD here'.

The Free Report

The free report website was a one page sales letter site that sold an entry level product and contained a name and email capture form that offered a free mini course or an in depth report delivered via email.

This site also offered to send out a printed information pack if the visitor left their full postal details.

Claim Your Free CD or DVD

This advert encouraged people to visit a website where they could claim their free CD or DVD about the topic. There were no catches or postage to pay they simply had to leave their name, postal address and email address.

The thank you page was a straight forward confirmation page and on one test we offered a free PDF report for download as an unadvertised gift.

The Follow up.

The free report website used an email autoresponder series as the main follow up process and delivered the information over a period of 7 days. After the 7 days we sent a mixture of sales emails and info emails.

The sales emails contained reasons to buy the product, testimonials from previous customers, questions and answers about the product and a further 'bribe' / offer to buy now.

In total there are 29 email follow ups spread over 52 days at present.

If the customer wanted a printed information pack this was sent first class the next day.

The customer was then placed in an offline follow up process that consisted of mailing the full letter again, a single page letter directing them to the website, a postcard, a letter containing testimonials and an order form, an audio CD of the sales letter read out, a final offer letter and a last chance follow up.

The claim your free CD / DVD advert responders were sent their CD or DVD next day by first class post and followed a similar path to the offline marketing process above. They also received email follow-ups along side any offline marketing.

The Results

With no surprise the offline follow up process converted far better than the online only follow up process and the mix of offline and online produced the best results.

Most adverts converted at around 2% for first time visitors to sales with the best one converting at just under 9%.

The best follow up process has a conversion of 18% of visitors to sales and of the 18% more than 36% went on to buy a higher priced up sell product.

Conclusion

We always knew that conversion levels offline beat pure online and the task now is to find more publications to place targeted adverts in.

The Internet has allowed us to test new ideas quickly and inexpensively; and once you have a winning formula online you can take that offline and quickly see a very good return on your advertising spend.