Eagle Financial Uses Video Landing Pages and Price Testing to Make Millions

In addition to classic best practices in marketing, Eagle Publishing’s financial division has adopted some shocking marketing tactics and tested them to profit maximization.

In addition to classic best practices in marketing, Eagle Publishing’s financial division has adopted some shocking marketing tactics and tested them to profit maximization. Vice President and Goup Publisher Roger Michalski shared the Eagle Financial’s counterintuitive testing results and what it’s like to work with independent experts. Plus, discover why video landing pages may be the best conversion tactic since long-letter postal direct mail pieces.

Company Profile

Founded: 2003. (Many of the publications were acquired by Eagle Publishing over time and some existed in print as far back as the 1980s, but Eagle made them available electronically starting in 2003.)
No. of Publications: 1 free site, 3 free email newsletters, 7 paid (print + email) newsletters, 1 paid membership service.
Employees: Directly 12, but share resources within Eagle Publishing, which has about 100 employees.
Business Model: Mainly subscriptions, some revenues from email list rentals.
Paying Subscribers: “Tens of thousands.”
Location: Washington, DC
Websites: http://www.eagledailyinvestor.com
http://www.eaglepub.com/EagleFinPubs/
http://www.markskousen.com/
http://www.fabian.com/
http://www.nicholasvardy.com/
http://www.chrisversace.com/

Target Market

Eagle Financial’s investing newsletter publications target men (90-95% of subscribers are men) 55 years of age or older who are usually well-educated and making six-figure incomes. They are self-directed investors and information junkies who want to trade their own stocks, build their own portfolios, and don’t trust financial planners to make their investment decisions.

Content

Eagle Financial has seven paid newsletter exclusively written for the company by experts, or financial “gurus.” The site also has free content available, limited to articles and videos.

The four featured gurus are Mark Skousen, Doug Fabian, Nicholas Vardy, and Chris Versace. Eagle Financial aims to build up reader trust and loyalty to one of the four gurus they feature so that readers feel they can “trust this guy with their money.” The first three gurus have a variety of paid newsletter offers (detailed in the revenues section); Versace currently only has a free newsletter called PowerTrend Brief.

In working with experts, Michalski says it’s critical to get writers who deliver on time. The content the gurus write for Eagle Financial is exclusive, but the gurus also write for other sites and book their own media appearances, which help with marketing them to the public. Eagle Financial has some ability to approve speaking engagements, but does not handle bookings for them.

The content is pay-worthy for many subscribers because, as Michalski puts it, there’s “a lot of advice about what to buy, but it’s more important to know when to sell. We tell you when to buy and when to sell.”

The paid newsletters are delivered on a monthly basis both in print and electronically (PDF on site or email — there is no option to receive either or print or electronic formats). Newsletter subscribers also get weekly email alerts, so the content for each publication is updated weekly.

The paid newsletters are usually submitted by a guru on a Tuesday and mailed/emailed on a Thursday; Eagle’s editorial staff will do some light editing and proofing. However, when a trading alert comes in (usually from one of the gurus), editorial has to work quickly and get the alert up on the website and out through email within under an hour since the alerts are for active trading.

Revenue Streams

Eagle Publishing generates tens of millions of dollars every year in revenues, and the Eagle Financial newsletters account for about 25% of total company revenues.

Almost 100% of the revenues generated by Eagle’s financial newsletters are from subscriptions; a small fraction comes from list rentals.

The prices vary according to publication and guru:

Michalski told us that there’s almost a 50/50 split on subscribers who take the 1-year v. the 2-year subscription plans. Annual subscriptions make up 40% of subscribers; the other 60% take a quarterly subscription. However, when the economy is down, that 60% can rocket up to 75%.

All quarterly subscription plans are on auto-renewal, but after testing, Eagle Financial found that auto-renewal helped the retention rate of some annual subscriptions but hurt others. Therefore, the only publications with auto-renewal for annual subscriptions are:

Skousen’s Forecast & Strategies,
Fabian’s High Monthly Income.
Vardy’s Bull Market Alert

Michalski stressed the importance of testing when it came to pricing. For example, the whole company assumed it could raise its quarterly subscription plan rate from $275 to $295 without seeing much effect, but they were wrong — the $295 price led to a significant drop in conversions. Also the company A/B tested $99.95 v. $77 for an annual term for four newsletters; for two newsletters, $99.95/year got more orders and revenues, and for the other two, $77/year did.

In addition to the paid newsletters, Mark Skousen offers a Winner’s Circle membership. This is a lifetime membership (offered two-three times throughout the year) that entitles subscribers to all of Skousen’s newsletters, as well as his expert guidance and more in-depth analysis. The membership comes with an annual “maintenance fee” of $199/year.

“After an upfront investment of nearly $5000, an additional $199 a year is a fractional fee,” says Michalski. “Most competitors have a maintenance fee around $100, but didn’t test it; we felt we could get more.”

Marketing Tactics

Eagle Financial gets most of its new traffic through PPC and email list barters, but it also employs a wide variety of tactics, detailed below.

PPC
Eagle Financial’s main method of driving traffic to its experts’ websites and getting new subscribers is to use Google AdWords to advertise free special report downloads in exchange for an email address. Each special report has a very specific conversion series for the first 30 days after a prospect opt-in to receive a report.

For example, Canadian Cash Cows is one of its best lead generation efforts, and people who download that special report get five emails promoting Fabian’s High Monthly Income newsletter. After 30 days, all email addresses get every marketing email newsletter for all publications.

Email Marketing
Eagle Financial enters into various email list rental swaps with competing publishers. Michalski said that some publishers demand a revenue-share deal, while others are just willing to hit each other’s list with no exchange of money, and Michalski is willing to do what’s easiest for the competing publisher. For the latter option, Eagle often requests a dedicated email blast promoting Eagle’s special reports or free newsletters.

In addition to email list swaps, Eagle will email its own internal lists several times of week, promoting a guru’s other publications or cross-selling one guru to another guru’s list. Michalski told us this was their biggest way of getting new subscribers to convert.

Postal Direct Mail
Eagle Financial uses direct mail, mostly for the monthly newsletters. Forecast & Strategies is by far their biggest mailing, usually around 150,000-200,000 pieces every six weeks. Michalski says they’ve had a lot of success with direct mail pieces in a #14 envelope that includes a 12-16 page letter, a flyer highlighting the premium offer, a reply card and envelope and a lift note.

PR
Eagle Financial does not handle PR for its experts, but their experts do pretty well booking media appearances on their own. It helps Eagle to market the experts if the company can say so-and-so was on Fox, etc., but Michalski says it’s very hard to put a dollar amount on that kind of exposure.

Trade Shows
The financial experts who write for Eagle Financial do about three consumer financial shows a year. These are external events, not hosted by Eagle. Michalski says it’s beneficial to “get in front of subscribers and hear face to face what they like about you what they don’t like, are they bullish/bearish.” Eagle Fiancial also has booths at these events.

Co-registration
Eagle Financial has used co-registration on third-party sites, usually to get email opt-ins in exchange for free reports or newsletters. (The prospects don’t have to re-enter their email — they just need to check a box.) However, Michalski told us that co-reg offers have not converted as well for the publication, so they stopped them and are not in the process of re-trying them.

Social Media
Eagle Financial’s social media presence is weak, and Michalski says it’s not a major focus because “people don’t want to discuss their finances over social media.” However, the site has some of the most integrated social media icons we’ve seen (screenshot below). By matching their own brand color, the site doesn’t allow social media icons to detract from its offers, but still allows visitors to connect through social media.

Video Landing Pages

While most financial publications have opted for a version of the long-letter online (and in fact, this does work for Eagle in postal direct mail pieces), Eagle has chosen to create video landing pages that feature PowerPoint slides with a voiceover reading the content (most of which would’ve been in a long-letter).

Shockingly, Eagle tested and found that it’s best to have videos between 25 and 40 minutes; the Winner’s Circle video is over an hour.

Each video has a call-to-action button towards the end of the video, with no other call-to-action button (unless you try to leave the page and get the text version — see below for details). Eagle tested where to put the call-to-action button, and found that putting it towards the end got their best conversion rate — any sooner depressed conversions.

“My feeling is that video landing pages work so well,” says Michalski, “is because one, you find yourself listening and reading at same time, so you’re comprehending it in two different ways.. or some people comprehend better one way than another and you’re capturing both groups of people. Two, when you’re on a landing page and it’s just a letter, people will just scroll down to see what product is you’re pitching and how much does it cost and making decision then. With a video landing page, you can’t scroll and after investing 25 minutes to an hour, you’re more likely to buy.”

Of course, in order to save people who click away from an auto-play video, the site has a friction box. If visitors choose to “stay on the page”, the page converts to a long-letter format. About 10% of subscribers come in through the long-letter text version of the landing page.

For the Winner’s Circle membership plan, membership is only available during specific parts of the year — all other times the membership is “closed” to new subscribers. Membership is open twice a year, and prospects are given a deadline of midnight on a certain date. Michalski says they often get sign-ups in the 11th hour.

Retention Tactics

Eagle Financial has a full renewal series via both print and email for its subscribers. The company tries to get as many subscribers as possible on auto-renewal, but as we discussed up in the Revenues section, auto-renewal opt-ins at birth have worked for some publications and depressed conversion rates for others.

The site also does special renewals, i.e., anyone not currently renewed for 2 years out will get a special offer or different-looking notice to attract them.

Cross-Sells and Upsells

Since Eagle Financial’s audience is made up on “information junkies,” the company often tries to cross-sell their experts’ publications to each expert’s audience. In fact, their average reader subscribes to four to six different pubs.

Eagle reaches out to their best prospects through email segmentation, and has found it’s easiest to upsell additional publications from the same guru.

About Roger Michalski

Roger Michalski has been with Eagle Publishing for more than a decade. He got his start out of college in direct marketing and has previously worked at the Smithsonian Institution in its catalog division.

His biggest surprise has been that “the more you know, the less you know.” For example, there have been times he’s sitting in a meeting and thinks a package is total kick-ass, but they send it out and it flops. “As much knowledge as you get, you have to test. You’re not smarter than the audience.”

And while he advocates for testing, he also warns against being obsessive: “When you can’t test, go with your gut. A lot of times you run tests and there’s not much difference, so just go with your gut. And be open to sharing ideas with other companies. Some people don’t want to help competitors, but your best prospects are your competitor’s list, so if you exchange ideas, you both get bigger in the long run.”

Vendors & Technology

Eagle Financial keeps most of its operations in-house, but uses the following third-party vendors:

Email management — Zeta
http://www.zetaemailsolutions.com/

Fulfillment — Quickfill
http://www.cwcsoftware.com/quickfill.php

Subscription Site Insider Analysis

We really love how Eagle Financial has taken the best of classic marketing tactics (like limited-time membership offers, email list swaps, and postal direct mail), but also tested — and got shocking results — to other things, like not having any call-to-action button on a video landing page until the end and price testing $99.95 and $77 for different publications. The disparate results in the latter test illustrate how there really are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to selling subscriptions — everything should be tested to maximize one’s profits.

We recommend Eagle test the friction box they have for their video landing pages. Unfortunately, the videos did not play in our browser (probably because we’re missing a plugin), and so instead of choosing between leaving or staying on the page, prospects may easily convert if asked “Would you like to see a text version of this page?” Wwe’d also like to see Eagle employ a bit more SEO into its main site (Eagle Daily Investor).