Funnel Best Practices

If you haven’t first read the Live Engagement Campaign Best Practices, please start there. In that document, we lay out our recommendations for individual campaigns based on work across 100+ campaigns by multiple publishers using Hum’s Live Engagement Campaigns to much success.

This document will use driving submissions/Calls for Papers as the use case, but these best practices are applicable across many others: event or webinar registration, reviewer or guest editor recruitment, and more. Speak with your Hum Customer Success team to develop a funnel for your specific use case. 

What is a funnel campaign?

Much like a sales or marketing funnel, you are trying to drive the user to take a specific action (e.g. submit a paper). We recommend starting with a basic 3-step funnel where you’re trying to engage with your audience around awareness, consideration, and conversion. 

Who to target and where to send them

  • For best practices on building a target segment for the first part of the funnel, see our original set of Live Engagement Campaign Best Practices.
  • For prompt 2 and 3 in the funnel, what pages should you be sending users to?
    • High value pages that will provide the users with adequate and engaging information, interesting them in moving towards submission. 
    • Consider not only the information on the page but the structure of the page you’re sending them to. E.g. Is it behind a paywall/login? What’s above the fold when they land on the page? What else would they likely need to know before deciding to submit with your journal/organization?
  • There are two ways to think about building your audience for stage 2 and 3 of your funnel: “targeted” or “side loaded”

Example of a “targeted” funnel

prompt 1

    • Audience: segmented by keyword affinity, browsing behavior, etc. 
  • Where are they seeing the prompt: Broad set of journal/article pages
  • Sample prompt copy: from the CfP landing page ”We welcome papers which present novel concepts and insights to the research community as well as highlight the controversies that need future research.”
  • Where are you sending them: CfP landing page

 

prompt 2

    • Audience: Anyone who converted on prompt 1
  • Where are they seeing the prompt: CfP landing page
  • Sample prompt copy: Want to learn more about our submission and editorial process? Access technical instructions, pre-publication services and more. 
  • Where are you sending them: a high value page where you demonstrate your value proposition for publishing with your journal/organization (Author Guidelines, Journal Guidelines, ITA page, etc.)

 

prompt 3

    • Audience: Anyone who converted on prompt 2
  • Where are they seeing the prompt: the high value page you sent them to from prompt 2
  • Sample prompt copy: Getting interested in publishing with [journal name]? Review our submission checklist and create your account now.
  • Where are you sending them: Journal submission site or another preparatory step just prior to submitting

 

Example of “side loaded” funnel (differences highlighted in yellow)

prompt 1

    • Audience: segmented by keyword affinity, browsing behavior, etc. 
  • Where are they seeing the prompt: Broad set of journal/article pages
  • Sample prompt copy: from the CfP landing page ”We welcome papers which present novel concepts and insights to the research community as well as highlight the controversies that need future research.”
  • Where are you sending them: CfP landing page

 

prompt 2

    • Audience: Anyone who converted on prompt 1 + anyone who lands on the CfP landing page
  • Where are they seeing the prompt: CfP landing page
  • Sample prompt copy: Want to learn more about our submission and editorial process? Access technical instructions, pre-publication services and more. 
  • Where are you sending them: a high value page where you demonstrate your value proposition for publishing with your journal/organization (Author Guidelines, Journal Guidelines, ITA page, etc.)

 

prompt 3

    • Audience: Anyone who converted on prompt 2 + anyone who lands on the high value page you sent them to from prompt 2
  • Where are they seeing the prompt: the high value page you sent them to from prompt 2
  • Sample prompt copy: Getting interested in publishing with [journal name]? Review our submission checklist and create your account now.
  • Where are you sending them: Journal submission site or another preparatory step just prior to submitting

 

Side by side comparison of funnel builds

“Targeted” funnel & “Side loaded” funnel

   

Other considerations

  • Continuity, but not necessarily repetition of, imagery
    • You should use related imagery across the funnel prompts. Keeping the branding or graphics the same will help the user feel connected to the process. 
    • Repeating the same imagery could be appropriate if you’re using a “targeted” funnel (i.e. If you’re using a “side loaded” funnel, Calls for papers related information in the image would be relevant for all of your audience in prompt 1 but not 2 and 3, so varying your imagery across that funnel would be necessary). 
  • Allowing enough time for users to progress through the whole funnel
    • Judging a funnel campaign based on an adequate amount of time and in relationship to the deadlines (i.e. CfP submission deadlines)
  • Retargeting users who don’t engage with the prompts
    • If a user closes or cancels a prompt, they can be reserved that prompt based on the Display Frequency setting on the campaign page. 
    • If you have a user who has progressed down ⅔ of your funnel, you could consider setting up an additional campaign for them with stronger messaging, or sending them to a different high value or services page (Author Support Services, Manuscript Preparation steps, etc.)
  • Campaign precedence should be established for priority campaigns (in the Settings section of the dashboard). This enables users who fall into multiple segments (and are eligible for multiple campaigns) to receive the highest priority campaigns first.  
  • We recommend using a mix of prompt types (pop up modal, slide in, banner and in line) across all of your Hum campaigns. Overusing the pop up modals may fatigue your users.