In short, it’s a technique to persuade your prospect or customer to do “one more thing”. Amazon.com has this mastered. While you’re looking at a book or other product, you’ll be served up a list of “Frequently Bought Together” and “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Something Else”. According to MarketingProfs, it’s difficult to get people to take an action, but once they do, it’s much easier to persuade them to take another action. It’s called an action train because “consumers online are like big, clunky old trains. To get them to build up steam and get going can take a lot of effort, but once you do get them to move, keeping them moving and achieving more than your initial goal becomes much easier.”
The author, Alex Becker outlines 3 steps to an action train:
#1: Get the train moving by making everything super easy. Once the person visits your website (or landing page), make the choices very simple (“click on A or B”) so the decision process is fast and doesn’t require much thought. Now the action train is in motion.
#2: Use the momentum of the “action train”. As the prospect is whizzing through the SIMPLE form (a pre-filled form is ideal), ask for another piece of information. Why not? Make it easy and the visitor will often comply.
#3: Get away with as much as possible. As Alex states in his example about Esurance, “Finally, Esurance will bring you to a page where it offers you a 5% discount for liking it on Facebook. You are already in action mode, so of course you are going to click ‘Like’. I mean… it’s a whole 5% off! And just like that, in one train of action, Esurance has your email, address, phone number, and permission to market to you on Facebook.”
Think about your own business in terms of creating an action train that works for you. While the prospect is on your website, will they (a) opt into your newsletter; (b) like you on Facebook; and (c) download your product brochure? One final point from MarketingProfs: A good opt-in offer has a 5-10% conversion rate with even high-quality traffic. However, the email opt-ins that follow up a product purchase online have near 100% rates. Why? Because the customer has committed to his path.
If you need help devising your own action train, contact us (info@thepartnermarketinggroup.com) now! The Partner Marketing Group is a marketing consulting firm specializing in working with technology resellers, ISVs, and partners.
By Cheryl Strege, President of The Partner Marketing Group
