Chris Smith - The Conversion Code

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:

ISBN: 9781119875802 (cloth)

ISBN: 9781119875819 (ePub)

ISBN: 9781119875826 (ePDF)

Cover Design: Alan Hebel, theBookDesigners

Cover Images: oatawa/Shutterstock

Author Photo: Michael A. Marcotte

To Anna, Lucas, Maya, and my family: I thank you for your love and support in good times and in bad .

To Jimmy and the Curaytor team (past and present): I've been lucky to learn from and work alongside you .

To clients and fans: your support and gratitude make me feel like the work I do matters .

When I originally wrote The Conversion Code in 2016, I was confident it would be well received. I did not, however, expect what happened to happen …

I could have never gotten into Johns Hopkins University, so you can imagine how it felt when I learned they were using The Conversion Code in their “Marketing Your Startup” course.

I could have never afforded to go to NYU, so you can imagine how it felt when they asked me to give a guest lecture about The Conversion Code for their e-commerce and digital marketing students.

I could have never dreamed growing up in a small town with cow pastures, chicken farms, and orange groves that people in Japan, Brazil, Russia, Turkey, and Poland would know who I am because my book was translated into their languages.

I could have never pictured when I was cold calling leads on a landline from my cubicle that I would teach inside sales at two software companies that ended up getting acquired for a quarter of a billion dollars.

I could have never thought, as I was failing out of business school, that the American Marketing Association would name me one of the four best marketers under 40. I even had to wear makeup for the photo shoot.

All of these accolades and experiences are thanks to you.

You are the ones who bought and read and reviewed and shared and suggested The Conversion Code to a colleague.

You are the ones who helped get it featured in Forbes, Fortune, Adweek, and USA Today .

You are the ones who helped me land bucket list speaking gigs at Hubspot's Inbound and with YPO chapters.

I will be eternally grateful, and I do not take it for granted.

In fact, I felt like I owed you a lot more than this poorly disguised humble brag. So, I went back into the lab and rewrote the book from the ground up.

It's The Conversion Code 2.0 (or, as my publisher prefers me to call it, the second edition completely revised and updated). This book is jam-packed with new tips, tricks, tools, templates, platforms, research, data, and best practices.

I'm especially excited about the DO THIS RIGHT NOW challenges I've sprinkled throughout. These are quick and easy-to-do marketing or sales tactics you can do and get results from while you read.

I'm sure every author says that their second edition is better than the first. Well, I'm saying it, too. I took a critical and humbling look at every word in the first book and immediately knew I could do better.

Much better: 11× better.

Plus, let's face it. Any book about digital marketing, social media, lead generation, or lead conversion gets quickly outdated. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. This stuff changes in the blink of an eye.

Want proof? The proof is in the privacy.

The era of annoying people is officially over.

Consumers won. They demanded privacy and transparency, and they got it. New laws and regulations targeting marketing and salespeople are now in place and strictly enforced. They will get stricter moving forward.

Here are just a few of the massive changes that have happened since The Conversion Code was originally written:

On January 27, 2021, Apple announced iPhones “will require apps to get the user's permission before tracking their data across apps or websites owned by other companies.” 1 Said simply; there is now a pop-up in every app that asks for permission to track you.

96% of people who are given that choice say no. 2

Then on June 7, 2021, Apple announced that iOS 15 would require a pop-up in the Mail app for the user to consent to sharing whether they opened or clicked an email. For decades marketers knew who opened and clicked their emails. Most salespeople rely on notifications that an email was opened to stay on top of the leads who are the most likely to close. Not anymore.

In May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation went into effect in Europe and caused websites worldwide to require a cookie consent notification. Since then, I can't visit a website without being interrupted by a pop-up asking to track my activities.

Only 11% of visitors click to accept cookies. 3

89% either ignore it, close it, or say no.

Verizon (and all of the other carriers) have changed how unwanted phone calls are handled and now label many of them as suspected spam. In 2020, according to the FCC, “U.S. consumers received nearly 4 billion robocalls per month.” 4

No wonder phone manufacturers and carriers have made it easier than ever to identify unwanted calls. They had to. The government gave them a June 30, 2021, deadline to do so.

Wouldn't you agree that it is harder than ever to get a lead to answer their phone?

Don't you ignore nearly every call you get while hoping they don't leave a voicemail? I do.

On August 13, 2018, HUD sued Facebook over housing discrimination. 5 That completely changed how you're allowed to target ads for several industries. For example, in real estate, you can no longer target by neighborhood or even ZIP code. Hundreds of other valuable filters disappeared overnight.

Facebook has gotten so much heat about privacy and censorship that they got their ass out of the kitchen and changed their name to Meta.

The fallout from the HUD lawsuit has reached well beyond Facebook (and Instagram). Google, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and TikTok either already have or will soon also remove filters that could be deemed Fair Housing Act noncompliant or discriminatory.

No matter your industry, if your marketing team hasn't adjusted to these new ad targeting rules, you will be paying more money for campaigns that don't work as well.