Creating content rabbit holes

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A couple years ago, Jonathan - my right hand at Gong - and I had a realization.

The “Youtube rabbit hole” was becoming mainstream and we wanted to figure out how we could get in on the action. More specifically, we wanted to figure out how to keep people consuming content once we had them hooked on an initial offer.

So we decided to create our own rabbit hole.

But before we could find ways to keep our audience moving down the proverbial rabbit hole, we first had to find where the journey stopped.

Where do we have our audience on the hook, then we let them go because we aren’t providing a path for them to continue down?

I call these “dead ends.” Places where the reader engaged and takes action (like downloads, listens, watches, etc) — but they can’t continue engaging with your content because there’s no next action to take.

As a fix, whenever we found a dead end, we introduced a relevant offer to create a conversion point.

We were consistently getting hundreds (and often thousands) of form fills when we promoted gated content. But once they downloaded, the game ended. The transaction was complete and they moved on.

So Jonathan came up with a beautiful idea: Add a PS line to the auto-responder email with a relevant content offer.

(For context, an auto-responder email is triggered after a form fill, delivering the content straight to their inbox.)

We knew those emails had ~60% open rate. So there was a path for us to pave, so to speak.

Here’s what it looked like:

Notice the copy isn’t the typical, bland “thanks for downloading!” then a sign off.

Instead we focused on sparking the rabbit hole with branded copy that was fun to read. We needed them to keep reading to get to the PS line.

We started by adding a single UTM as a test. We were stoked when we saw an immediate and substantial spike in additional downloads for the second piece of content.

So we jumped into scale mode. We took our top 20 content offers in circulation and added this PS line to the associated auto-responder email.

The result was unreal:

30% more downloads and 10% more MQLs!

That’s a double-digit lift with one additional sentence of copy.

All that additional engagement grew our brand and inbound numbers.

That’s what Robert Cialdini calls a “small big” — small changes that spark BIG results.

And it isn’t limited to PS lines.

You can do it with landing pages too

Another quick example…

A couple months ago I partnered with Sell Better to produce a free video course titled, 5 Sales Plays for Grabbing Attention.

Sell Better runs a daily webinar, and after every single form fill, their thank you page provides another piece of content:

This channel has become the #1 source for downloads and a big reason why 1,686 sellers have downloaded it to date.

Don’t sleep on this high-value real estate.

How to create more conversion points

1. Include auto responders for all your gated content and events

2. Add a PS line with additional relevant content offers

3. Add conversion points to your thank you pages

4. Audit your marketing to find other dead ends and introduce conversion points

That’s how you boost engagement and start creating content rabbit holes.

Holler at you next Saturday,
Devin

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