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SmartLinks Training Guide

Presented by Thrive Leads

SmartLinks Training PDF Guide

COMPLEMENTARY DOCUMENT TO THE SMARTLINKS TRAINING

WEBINAR

The goal of this guide is to give you a reference document for everything that

was covered in the SmartLinks Training webinar. You will learn how to build

and use SmartLinks on your website as well as 5 examples of how you can

use SmartLinks today across different website types.

Here is what will be covered in this PDF Guide:

How To Use SmartLinks .................................................................................... 2

Step 1: Create Form & Add A New State ........................................................ 2

Step 2: Create the SmartLink ......................................................................... 3

SmartLinks In Action .......................................................................................... 6

Bloggers ......................................................................................................... 6

Product Vendor .............................................................................................. 7

Podcaster ....................................................................................................... 9

Service Based Business .............................................................................. 10

Affiliate Marketer .......................................................................................... 11

Frequently Asked Questions ........................................................................... 13

http://thrivethemes.com/leads/



How To Use SmartLinks SmartLinks is an additional feature in Thrive Links that will improve the

experience different readers have on your website. Here are the steps you

need to follow to get your first SmartLink sent out to your audience.

Step 1: Create Form & Add A New State

After you have picked a template to edit you’ll see two buttons at the bottom of

the screen. There are two states to choose from:

Default – This is the opt-in form you want to show a first time visitor (or non-

subscriber) to your website

Already Subscribed – This is the opt-in form you’d show someone who has

already subscribed to your email list. To get this state you need to push the

+Add button and click Already Subscribed


https://thrivethemes.com/leads/more/



You’ll then see this:

Now you can click between the two different states and edit the opt-in forms

for them.

Step 2: Create the SmartLink

After you’ve edited the opt-in forms to your liking, the next step is to create the

SmartLink you can use for your emails. The SmartLink Creation icon is in your

ThriveLeads Dashboard:

Clicking the link icon will bring up a dialog box that will take you though 5 steps

to create your SmartLink. They are as follows:




Step 1 – Define where you want to send your visitors – You’ll mostly be

picking “page“, “post“ or “custom URL“ (great if you’re using UTM tracking

links).

Step 2 – Tell us which Lead Groups you would like to target – you can

choose to target all of the forms on your site or only specific groups

Step 3 – Tell us which lead groups to target – you’ll only have this option if

you choose to target specific groups in Step 2.

Step 4 – What should be the behavior of the forms? – you can choose to

either hide the forms or show the already subscribed state of the form. What

happens if you decide to show the already subscribed state and there isn’t a

form built? See the diagram below (you’ll see some examples of when this

could happen later):




Step 5 – How long should this behavior last for?

Only once – if the visitor visits another page on your site and then goes

back to the SmartLink page, they will see the defautl opt-in forms again.

Until the visitor closes the browser tab – the visitor can visit different

pages and come back to the SmartLinks page and they will still be

shown the subscribed state. If they close the browser tab and then later

decide to come back to the page, they will be shown the defaults again.

A custom period of time – lets you choose how long (in days) the

visitor will see the alread subscribed state. You will see an idea of when

you might use this in the Affliate Marketer example later.

For as long as possible – this is what we recommend you use most

often as it gives your website the best chance of recognizing your

subscribers across all of their devices, to make sure they are getting the

experience you want them to be having.




SmartLinks In Action Now we will discuss some ideas on how you can use SmartLinks on your

website to help give your readers the experience they need and deserve. We

will look at ideas for bloggers, product vendors, podcasters, service based

businesses and affliate marketers

Bloggers

Objectives

Build your list as effectively as possible

Turn readers into subscribers, subscribers to loyal visitors and loyal

visitors into raving fans

How SmartLinks Can Help

It allows you to aggressively pursue new leads when a new visitor is on your

site, while not annoying your loyal readers with offers that are irrelevant to

them. Pop-ups and strong calls to action are good when you’re trying to turn a

new visitor into a subscriber but all of these opt-in forms are annoying and

inturrupting to someone who is already a subscriber.

In the photo below you can see the default site set-up on the left where the

blogger is agressively trying to get the reader to sign up to his newsletter to get

a free report (not pictured – two lightbox pop-ups and a footer form). Why

would you want to show all of this to a repeat visitor? When you use

SmartLinks you can show your subscriber the page on the right where there’s

no opt-in forms at all. Just pure content.




Product Vendor

Objectives

Sell more of your product(s)

Build a mailing list, so you have more opportunites to sell


As a product vendor your pitch for lead generation might be something along

the lines of “Subscribe to my newsletter and get exclusive deals/discounts.“

Here are some ideas/examples of forms you could use with SmartLinks if you

have a product vendor type website:




After the reader subscribes to the newsletter the sidebar changes from trying

to get their name and email to giving them the option to redeem a coupon.

You could also change the footer opt-in box to something like this:

The person who subscribed is obviously interested in building muscle so now

you can promote a premium muscle building product the next time they visit,

instead of asking for their email address again.




Podcaster

Objectives

Podcasts is an interesting area, because you might think your primary way to

grow your audience is by getting your listeners to subscribe to your podcast.

But we think this goal should be secondary to building an e-mail list on a

website, purely because interacting with your listeners through these

podcasting platforms is limited to publishing new episodes. Also, you don’t

own the audience on the podcasting platform, but you own your email list, and

have the right to transfer it between different systems/services if needed.


On the left you have the defaut state, where the goal is to get an opt-in in

exchange for a free report on how to grow your podcast. On the right you can

see the already subscribed state, where the goal is to get the reader to either

subscribe on iTunes/Stitcher and share the podcast over social networks.

Another idea would be to send the subscriber to leave you a review on iTunes.




Service Based Business

Objectives

Get more clients

Build trust and rapport

Win prospects for in-depth sales messages

Get more leads


In the example below the the default form switches from the lead generation

form for a first time visitor to a box that encourages the subscriber to get on

the phone. The goal here is to build the trust and rapport you would need to

start delivering more in-depth sales messages.

And now a screen filler lightbox idea – with a new visitor you could promote a

free guide to get the potential customer on your list.




And then after you have them on their list you could promote a live training

webinar, which would again be used to build rapport and trust with the

potential customer.

And then once you have converted the visitor to a customer you can use

SmartLinks to send them to a completely clean site, like we showed how to do

in the blogging example above.

Affiliate Marketer

Objective

Grow your mailing list

Send more (and higher value) clicks to affiliate offers


There's a difference between placing banner ads on your site compared to

creating high value based promotions. Banner ads get ignored, but when you

focus on creating something of value for your visitor, your conversions

increase.

This is called pre-selling and it works because your audience trusts you and

you’re providing them with something awesome.




Lets get into some specific examples...Below you can see how the sidebar has

switched to promote a specific post on backlink checkers where one tool (the

tool you’re promoting) survives the analysis, instead of the original Personal

SEO Strategy report opt-in form.

Another effective use of SmartLinks for Affiliate marketers is to take advantage

of the “ Until the visitor closes the browser tab“ setting when you build your

SmartLink. Imagine you just finished an epic promotional post on a case study

of how to effectively use a powerful tool like BuzzSumo.

You write up the e-mail to send out to your subscribers and click send. The

goal for the post is to have the reader see how powerful BuzzSumo is and how

it could help them, so it makes sense to have zero distractions from your

message. You can create a SmartLink that hides all of your forms until the

visitor closes their browser tab.

The reasoning behind this is if they read through the post and don’t buy, they

might not be interested in BuzzSumo, however, the next time they visit the

BuzzSumo post you’d want them to see your promotions for other tools they

might find helpful.




Frequently Asked Questions Q: Will it mean longer loading times for visitors?

A: No, there is zero speed impact from using a smartlink

Q: What if a non-subscriber gets tagged as a subscriber?

A: It can happen, but it's very rare (forwarded e-mails for example). Nothing bad

will happen if this occurs.

Q: What if someone unsubscribes from my list?

A: They will still be tagged as a visitor. But this is probably a good thing, because

they subscribed, got the offer and then decided they didn't want to be on the list.

It makes sense to continue showing this person a clutter free page if they

continue to visit.

Q: What if a subscriber returns from a different device or browser?

A: Initially you won't be able to know they are a subscriber because we can't

track someone switching devices, but this is why we always suggest sending

smartlinks to increase the chances they will be tagged on all their devices

The key question: Is this problem solved by NOT using SmartLinks? In most case

the answer is no. Because if a subscriber gets put back into the default scenario,

the worst case is that they are treated like every other website treats them, and

they are used to this.




Q: Does SmartLinks work with UTM link tracking?

A: Yes, you'd put the SmartLink into the UTM URL builder or put the UTM

generated link into the custom URL in the SmartLink builder.

Q: Does SmartLinks work with other tracking options & link shorteners (like Bit.ly)?

A: Yes

Q: What happens if a visitor opt-ins with Thrive Leads?

A: See Diagram

Action Steps You Can Take NOW:

Set up the "Already Subscribed" states for forms on your site

In every e-mail link to your site, use a SmartLink so your visitors will be

tagged as subscribers ASAP

Use SmartLinks even if your setup isn't perfect yet




This content has been presented by

Thrive Leads, a Thrive Themes product.

Thrive Leads is designed to be the most effective lead

generation plugin for WordPress. If your site runs on

WordPress and you’d like to create a highly profitable

email list, don’t miss out on this.





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