How Forte Labs Boosted Sales by 62% with Personalized Marketing

Key Takeaways:

• +62% more sales from leads within their first 30 days of opting-in to a lead magnet
• +200,000 segmentation data points captured
• Reduced need to “always be selling” with high-pressure email campaigns
• Can safely spend more on acquisition, i.e. amplify paid acquisition campaigns

Challenge:

Forte Labs, founded by productivity expert Tiago Forte, is a leading training company helping individuals and organizations improve personal effectiveness. Despite selling 7-figures worth of online courses, they faced several challenges:

• Declining website traffic due to Google algorithm changes and the rise of AI
• Revenue drop when shifting from cohort-based to self-serve courses
• Time-consuming live launches to maintain growth
• Weak revenue per subscriber, especially for new leads

”We were treating everyone the same, which in retrospect made zero sense. While we were making sales, we were also exhausting ourselves with live launches that took a lot of time and effort. The only way to make this model continue to work was to drastically scale up lead generation – which we were struggling to do.”

– Julia Saxena, Director of Marketing at Fortleabs

Solution:

Step #1: Going beyond first names and email addresses

Forte Labs set an ambitious goal to provide personalized, relevant information to every lead. They created a new lead survey using RightMessage, presented after opting-in to a lead magnet. The survey collected data on:

• Specific needs and help required
• Obstacles faced
• Employment status and type of work
• Tools already in use
• Preferred learning style

86% of all new leads completed this survey, with data immediately synchronized to their email marketing system.

”We knew we wanted to be able to recommend specific offers to different people. If someone’s already read our book, and they learn best as part of a community, we wanted to not only show them the best offer we have for them – but we also wanted to describe why this was the best offer we had for them in a way that made total sense.”

– Julia Saxena, Director of Marketing at Forte Labs

Step #2: Personalize existing email sequences

The team split their original funnel into three distinct sequences, each tailored to one of their flagship products. They then personalized these sequences based on survey data:

• Replaced generic terms with specific tools mentioned by the lead
• Tailored examples to match the lead’s primary motivation
• Created multiple variations of each email to align with different reader profiles

”I think as a rule of thumb we wanted to at least have one or two personalized parts in every email. Not necessarily much more. We were able to make our emails a lot more personally relevant without writing a ton of extra copy.”

– Julia Saxena, Director of Marketing at Forte Labs

Step #3: Create a system that works 24/7/365 on autopilot

Forte Labs set up an automated system in their email marketing platform to:

• Route new leads to the appropriate funnel based on survey responses and lead magnet
• Easily scale for additional products or lead magnets
• Allow for future automated pitches, downsells, and cross-sells

”We were able to visually map out how the different data points we were collecting related to the actions we wanted people to take. We had one path that beginners to productivity should go down, and we were able to define the personas that mapped to each path easily with the data RightMessage collected.”

– Julia Saxena, Director of Marketing at Forte Labs

Results:

The new automated system dramatically improved Forte Labs’ marketing effectiveness:

• Purchase rate for new leads within 30 days increased from 0.69% to 1.12% (62% increase)
• Tens of thousands of dollars in new revenue generated monthly
• Over 200,000 segmentation data points collected

Future Plans:

1. Personalize offer sales pages using RightMessage
2. Display lead-specific product ads across their websites and blog
3. Create additional email funnels with automated downsells and cross-sells
4. Personalize lead generation landing pages in real-time
5. Research additional offers based on collected market research data
6. Identify potential B2B opportunities from survey data

”There’s definitely some other projects around the corner that we’re working on right now… I already see how once the whole setup is complete, there’s so many things that can still be improved.”

– Julia Saxena, Director of Marketing at Forte Labs

Well done team Forte Labs.