Increasing Conversions: Quick Wins That Work in 2026  🔗 **Source:** [Increasing Conversions: Quick Wins That Work in 2026](https://share.snipd.com/episode/a40cc222-c1ba-47e4-bd3b-e96acfef6b86) ## Highlights - **AI Increased Noise So Humanity Converts Better** - Conversions are harder because AI has increased content noise and offer volume. - Jay Schwedelson says lo-fi, human-feeling content outperforms AI-produced content because audiences crave signals of humanity (dog barks, background sounds). Transcript: Michael Stelzner Listen, obviously there's a lot of noise, right? Jay Schwedelson There's a lot of noise. There's more emails being sent out than ever. There's all this AI slop that's going out. And part of the AI slop, okay, is allowing us to just pump out more of everything. We're able to pump out more offers, right? It's easier to get out our offers on social media. It's easier to get our posts on social media. It's easier to do all of that. So now in order to get conversions, we actually have to do lots of little things that add up that actually make a big difference. And I ([Time 0:02:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5cf74401-c9ec-4767-af3d-b17ff1e72371)) - **Make Homepage Primary Real Estate Data Capture** - Make data capture the hero of your homepage by placing an incentivized signup offer in the primary real estate. - Jay recommends 'get on our insiders list' or 'early drop list' for product brands to trigger FOMO and first-access desire. Transcript: Jay Schwedelson Yeah. I think that this is probably the biggest fail by marketers, consumer marketers, business marketers in general, which is the growth of your database. On an annualized basis, believe it or not, your email database, your database overall, you'll have about 20% attrition. You will lose about 20% of people. Balanced email addresses, people move, people change addresses, ([Time 0:05:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/896abf43-e324-4b14-a193-c72e0f530ac9)) - **Use Incentivized Timed Pop Ups Immediately** - Use pop-ups aggressively because they convert: ~5% of first-time visitors and up to ~9% for repeat visitors. - Deploy timed pop-ups on key pages (pricing, resources) after X seconds to capture >10% conversions on those triggers. Transcript: Jay Schwedelson People don't like me. I'm okay with that, but let's talk about pop-ups for a second. I lost half your audience just now. No, cause we all know it works. It works, but let me tell you why you have to do it. The, for the worst thing that marketers say is this, I don't like pop-ups, so we don't do them. They annoy me, so we're not going to do them. That's what every marketer says. But here's the deal. When you go to Nike's website and you're a first-time visitor, they do a pop-up, all right? And you need to buy sneakers. Do you see the pop-up and say, you know what? I'm so angry at you, Nike, for having a pop-up. I'm never buying from you. Or do you click the little X in the upper right-hand corner and you forget there was a pop-up like three seconds later, okay? You're not going to be losing business because you have a pop-up, but I'll give you the most wild stat. For first-time visitors to your website, if you have a pop-up that has any kind of incentive, whether it's a guide on the business side, a discount code, early access sign up, whatever It is, any kind of incentive, you will see roughly 5% of first-time visitors to your site actually give you their email address. Okay, five times visitors to your site, if you're still running that pop-up, it will go up to about 9%. ([Time 0:12:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/120b76f5-e895-47cb-bbb4-7fcc89f27a21)) - **Add Recency Signals To Evergreen Content** - Refresh evergreen content with explicit recency signals (month and year) to get picked up by AI answer tools. - Examples: change titles to '10 Best HR Tools April 2026' to boost AI inclusion and drive traffic back to site. Transcript: Jay Schwedelson We have evergreen content, right? The 10 best running shoes, the 10 best HR software tools. Everybody's got evergreen content and offers. The AI tools, doesn't matter if it's Chachapiti or Claude or you name it, what they want is recency signals. That is the number one thing that they want. If you go back to all of your offers, if you go back to all of your content and you just add in the month and the year, okay? The 10 best running shoes, April, 2026. The 10 best HR software tools, April, 2026. You add it back to all of your old blog posts. You add the month and the year. AI tools are picking up anything that has a recency signal. ([Time 0:16:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1825719d-b5bb-4f6b-b309-a1a9292ef675)) - **Run On Platform Lead Ads On Instagram** - Run lead-gen ads inside platforms (Instagram Reels/Stories) and keep users on-platform to acquire subscribers cheaply ($2–$5). - Pre-fill email fields and limit to ~3 fields to keep cost per subscriber low and conversion high. Transcript: Jay Schwedelson Okay, let's talk about trying to get people onto your either consumer or your business newsletter file. There are two spots that are absolutely crushing it, coming in well under $5 per subscriber, oftentimes in the $2 to $3 range. And those two things are on Instagram, okay, doing paid reels or story ads where the person, and you've seen them, right? Hey, do you want to subscribe to this thing? Yeah, yes, register, pops open like two fields, you fill in the two fields and you hit submit. Those ads on Instagram reels and stories. Is that like a lead ad or something like that where you stay on platform? Is that the idea? You stay on platform. And here's a secret for everybody for social media, paid social media, period, end of story. When you are trying to get people to subscribe to something, to give you their information, never take them off the platform. Nobody wants to go on Instagram, see your ad, and say, this is the greatest ad of all time. Let me stop doing brain rot and scrolling and leave Instagram to look at this garbage newsletter I was barely interested in. Nobody wants to do that. What they want to do is say, oh, I'm scrolling. I see a bunch of stories. Oh, this newsletter looks good. Yes. Three fields. And I keep on with my brain rot. Keep them on platform. You get the data. That's how you keep it the lowest. And by the way, this is not just a consumer thing. Business to business is crushing it on Instagram. Your audience is there. Three billion monthly active users. They are there. So whether you're a business marketer or a consumer marketer or a nonprofit marketer, it does not matter. ([Time 0:20:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ad02e19c-e1b6-4156-ba31-8b74b3c3bd22)) - **Use Reddit Lead Gen And Reminder Ads** - Test Reddit's new lead-gen and reminder ad units to grow lists and surface mid-funnel audiences. - Reddit lead forms keep users on-site and can push emails and push notifications for sale reminders. Transcript: Jay Schwedelson So people were sleeping on Reddit. Reddit, you know, in the last four or five months has changed their ad units. Reddit used to be really, really tough to do anything on there that would produce any type of meaningful results with paid ads. But they launched new ad units. The one ad units I love is called their lead gen ad unit. Identical, basically, to what's going on in Instagram, that you could be in some subreddit community. You could be in the pop culture subreddit community, or you could be in the Star Trek subreddit community, or the IT security subreddit community. And you could have a pop-up ad there that says for your newsletter, your special offer, your guide, what are your VIP list. And just like on Instagram, it pops open the little thing. It says, hey, you're interested in this. And then you put in your information, your email address in two fields. You hit submit. Again, you don't leave Reddit. And this can go right into your CRM or email sending platform. So this only happened the last few months that Reddit actually did this. And then about in the last few weeks, they launched another ad unit called their reminder ad unit, where while you're on Reddit, you could actually run these ads that you remind people About a sale, right? Click here. If you want to be reminded about Nike's upcoming sale, you click remind. Okay. And then what they do is Reddit will actually send you an email reminding about that sale as it's upcoming, and it'll actually do a push notification on the app as well on your phone. ([Time 0:26:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c7c742cc-27ae-4c40-b018-b12c8e2ea229)) - **Match Landing Page Hero Image To Source Creative** - Match the hero image on a landing page to the ad or email creative viewers clicked to keep visitors confident they're in the right place. - Jay says this consistency alone can lift conversion rates by over 10%. Transcript: Jay Schwedelson Love this topic because when we talk about landing page, it could be a destination page. It's any place where you are taking somebody that just clicked on something. You're trying to convert them, right? It could be somebody clicked on a search ad, you're taking them to a specific page trying to convert them. They clicked on an email offer, they go to a specific page trying to convert them, a consumer offer, a B2B offer, a social media post, you're trying to convert them to a webinar registration, To a discount, to buying a product, whatever it is, you're taking them to this specific page. The thing that boggles my mind, the thing that is unacceptable, and we're going to solve it right now for everybody, is that we think it's okay. We think it's okay that you get 100 clicks on some email offer that you send out. And they go to this destination page, this landing page, and then 95% of these people bail. They bounce. And you convert on maybe 5% if you're lucky. And we think it's normal and acceptable that a second ago, 100 people were interested in this thing. And then collectively, like they were on a party line on a phone. And they said, bah, nobody, everybody bail on it. I know we clicked on it, but just bail on it. And only 5% of the people convert. It doesn't make any sense. They were just interested. So what are the little things that you're not doing right on your landing page that's causing to turn people off so fast? So let's go through some of the things that you probably would never think of. First off, the big ([Time 0:29:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/22a6e90d-c263-4952-990f-640034ed32cd)) - **Minimize Form Fields And Use Multi Step Forms** - Reduce form friction: each extra required field costs ~8% of registrants; use multi-step forms when collecting >5–8 fields. - Use quizzes as lead-gen to gather rich data while keeping engagement high. Transcript: Jay Schwedelson Okay. Now let's talk about the number of fields. Okay. The number of fields that you're asking for. Wait, wait, wait. Michael Stelzner What are you talking about fields? Okay. Jay Schwedelson You go on a page and it says, I want your first name, your last name, your pet's name, your zip code, everything about your life. Oh, you're talking about a lead generation, like a page that's done on generating leads. You're asking for all the different fields. Okay. In general, first off, for every additional must fill field that you require, you'll lose about 8% of your registrants. And I share that because you may want to collect a lot of data on people because you want to have all this information. But the more that you are asking for, your form is looking visually boring. They get to the page, you're like, nah, too much work. So first off, you want to think about how many fields you have. Now, you may say, but we do need to collect a lot of fields because of this, that, or who cares, whatever. If your form has more than eight fields, okay, I tend to lean towards five. But if your form is more than eight fields, you want to go to a multi-step form. I think that is step one, step two, step three. You don't want somebody to show up to your page and see eight fields that they have to fill in because it doesn't matter. They look at it and it feels like work to them and it turns them off. And that's why they're part of that 95% that's leaving. So if you've never tested that multi-step form and you have more than eight fields that you're collecting, this is probably the primary reason that you're losing conversions. ([Time 0:32:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f4fdcc20-1c34-4d61-aadb-88e9f391b4c9)) - **Use First Person Buttons And Immediate Social Proof** - Replace generic 'Submit' buttons with first-person copy that repeats the offer (e.g., 'Yes I want my three free quotes'). - Place one hero testimonial, logos, and awards near the button as a final vote of confidence. Transcript: Jay Schwedelson You have a button at the bottom. You have that conversion button. And if anybody out there on your destination page, your landing page, if you have your button language and it says the word submit, you probably should stop listening, get a new job outside Of marketing because that's ridiculous. It's the worst word in the history of marketing. I don't even know how it got into marketing. It's actually weird if you step back and think about it. Yeah, I know. Michael Stelzner It's like, what am I submitting to? Jay Schwedelson Exactly. It's just very, very strange. So what should it say? Okay. What you really wanted to say is two things. Number one, it should be written in first person and it should repeat the awesomeness of the offer, right? It should say, let's say you're selling insurance quotes. Yes, exclamation mark. I want my three free quotes, right? Yes. Count me in for this awesome webinar. You know, have it written in first person and then repeat the offer. Because what you're doing is you're building that last vote of confidence where the person's like, yes, that is what I want. And they're not going to look at the button and be like, this button rocks. I love this button. But quickly, as they're moving fast and they're subconsciously like, I like this. Michael Stelzner This is what I need. Yeah. On Social Media Examiner's homepage, our button says, yes, I want to be a better marketer. And when, when you click on it, then it pops open the fields and then it says, send me a copy. And it probably should say, send me my copy, but you know, um, so that's it for a person. Yeah. So, okay. Jay Schwedelson What about social proof? Let's talk about that and let's testimonials, all that fun stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So now we figured out the button, but now the other secret sauce thing that you want to have right near that button, either right below that submission button, we won't call it a submit Button, right below the submission button or on, let's say the left of that button, you want to have one hero testimonial. Every company on earth has a testimonial. You could ride one testimonial and build the greatest company of all time. And you want to put it right near the body. It would say something like, these are the most comfortable socks ever, said a recent buyer, right? This software saved us 50% of our budget. One testimonial in quotes, right near that button, it is that final vote of confidence that the person is like, okay, somebody else likes it. And then the other thing that you want to think about, the two other things that you want to think about is have logos on that page, on your destination page, on that landing page. Have logos of other major companies that you've partnered with, that your brand has done anything with, any type of logos on that page. Because when the person gets that page, you're like, is this company legit? Should I work with them? And then they see this testimonial, they see these logos. And then the last secret sauce is awards. People sleep on awards. I don't care, okay, if you won the MVP award on the softball team when you were nine. It doesn't matter. You put any awards that your company has won of any kind and you put it on that destination page. Because when that person's like, should I buy this thing? Well, they won some awards. ([Time 0:36:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/519103a4-c034-48ba-b8fb-b9d77ad1b49c)) - **Use The Thank You Page For Immediate Upsells** - Optimize post-conversion thank-you pages with relevant upsells or additional freebies aligned to the original offer. - Jay calls this the highest click-through real estate; recommend related products or guides immediately after sign-up/purchase. Transcript: Michael Stelzner Is there any tips that I called it a submit button, but we know what I mean. What happens after they either purchase or after they've completed the form? So maybe under thought about things that we can do after that. Jay Schwedelson I'm glad you brought that up. It's probably the most underutilized real estate on your website, right? So recently, my son just went off to college and we got him this filter, this big filter thing for his dorm room because there's like no air, good airflow or whatever. And then after we bought this filter thing on his website, which was whatever, there was another page would had all this other stuff that we could buy that to make a healthy, you know, Air and whatever. I ended up buying all this other junk that I was like, oh my God, why did I buy all this? But the reason I bought it is because what happens is you, you get excited like, oh, I'm into this brand in this moment, in this second, and you buy it. And that real estate, that thank you page, the worst thing that you can do is just say, thank you. And your thing will ship out soon, right? Horrendous. You want to say you got that? Well, you'll also love these three things. Okay. And this is for business marketers and consumer marketers. They sign for a webinar. You love that webinar? You should download these three guides. You like this product? You'll love these products. There is no higher click-through rate, no higher click-through rate that you will have anywhere on your website than on that post page, than that post-submission page for the offers That you put on that page in that moment. ([Time 0:41:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3d826ff2-2d35-4447-aad7-570e198736da)) - **Add One Click Email Actions To Boost Deliverability** - Use one-click email actions (quizzes, choices) to increase clicks, improve deliverability, and tag subscriber interests. - Jay recommends two-option one-click quizzes to both boost engagement and capture interest data for targeting. Transcript: Michael Stelzner Any thoughts on using that? Because the friction is like almost nothing, right? Yeah. Do you use them? Do you recommend them? Jay Schwedelson The reason that the one click thing is very, very important, taking a one click action, is that in order to stay in somebody's inbox nowadays, it has nothing to do if you put the word free In the subject line or something nonsense like that. It's the person's engagement with the emails that you're sending to them, right? And the problem is opens are viewed as very limited engagement by email providers, right? By the email inbox providers. But clicks are magic. If somebody clicks, then the next time you send them an email, it's going to stay in that person's inbox. So getting them to click on anything is critical now. And these one- motions work really, really, really, really well. One of the things that works well, if you've never tested is one click quizzes, give people two options as if it's a quiz, this one or that one. Oh, and then you can tag them on the backend, huh? And then you got it. You won. And you also have the data, right? You know what they're interested in. So the one click motion is helpful for data as well as deliverability. ([Time 0:44:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9fb43053-a1bc-43cc-94da-88c2cf3640e8))