Take your content marketing efforts from Nissan Versa to Porsche Cayenne by using content upgrades

Content upgrades can be the most powerful tool in your subscriber growth arsenal. Learn how to create them in this article and learn how to use all the tools you’re already paying for in MailChimp with the new online course Chimp Essentials ($40 for readers using SUJANRULES).

Let me start this off by answering the most common questions about content upgrades:

• Yes, they require a little more work than just writing a blog post. But wouldn’t you like to do a little more work to get a lot more subscribers? Take your content marketing efforts from Nissan Versa to Porsche Cayenne?
• Yes, you need to make something relevant and useful to the people who would be interested in the blog post they’re reading. You can’t just call in the upgrade or make a PDF version of the blog post. Think: video walk-through of the lesson, PDF checklist for doing what’s in the blog post, customizable spreadsheet with the formulas in the blog post, additional materials on the same topic.
• No, you don’t have to do content upgrades for every blog post ever. Look at your stats and traffic to find the top 5-10 articles on your site. Try content upgrades on the most popular posts first.
• No, you don’t need to pay for fancy lead-gen software. All you need is your WordPress site, your normal MailChimp account and a $49 plugin (20% off using this link) called MailChimp for WordPress – which you can then use to turbo charge all your signup forms on your site.
• No, you don’t need to spend a fortune on web design for this strategy to work. There are great companies out there that can build you a killer WordPress website affordably. Take a look at Lightning Sites, Lobster Digital Marketing and WodSites.

Brian Harris of Videofruit reports that 68% of his subscribers came from content upgrades. Brian Dean from Backlinko reported a 785% conversion rate increase when he started using content upgrades and a single content upgrade form accounts for 30% of his new signups. Impressive, right?

Now that you’re sold on doing content upgrades, let’s look at how you go about making them.

1. Find an article on your site that gets the most traffic (i.e. look at your Google Analytics – go to
2. Behavior, Site Content, All Pages, then sort by Page Views)
3. Figure out what additional resource would make that content even better – something that the type of person who read that article would crave. If they finished reading it, loved it but wanted more, what would the “more” be?
4. Create it. Some ideas/examples: a Google Doc spreadsheet, a PDF (created in Word or Pages), a private or password protected video, an exclusive discount on a related product – all sent via MailChimp. If the upgrade needs to be designed and design isn’t your strong suit, spend a few bucks on Fiverr or Elance.
5. Add a form to your article (at the bottom or in the middle and the bottom) to collect email addresses that will be sent the content upgrade (I’ll show you how in the next section.)
   Automate sending them the content upgrade via MailChimp.
6. Get a metric ton more subscribers (scientific fact: subscribers typically weigh 98.12 lbs each on MailChimp).

Using the right WordPress plugin to create your content upgrades will a) add new subscribers to your list and tag them as wanting this upgrade and b) update existing subscribers already on your list and tag them as wanting the content upgrade. That way, in either case, they get an email immediately with the upgrade they requested.

How to create a content upgrade using MailChimp and WordPress

1. In MailChimp create a merge field for your content upgrade and make it hidden (by ensuring VISIBLE is not checked off). Go to your list in MailChimp, then Settings, then List fields and *|MERGE|* tags. Ex. CMUPGRADE

2. Install MailChimp for WordPress (that link gets you 20% off because I love you) on your WordPress site and activate the pro version with your license.

3. In MC4WP create a form and paste in the following HTML code:
<input type=”hidden” name=”CMUPGRADE” value=”yes”> – note, change CMUPGRADE to the name of your own merge field.

4. Then, edit your form’s Settings and make sure Update existing subscribers is marked as YES. Turn off Use double opt-in and Send final welcome email (since you’ll be sending them the welcome in your automation sequence).

5. Still in Settings, under Form behaviour, add a special redirect page which tells the subscriber that your exclusive content is on its way and hyping it up a little.

6. Create a custom automation sequence to deliver your upgrade. In MailChimp, go to Automation, click Create Automation Workflow, select your list, and click Custom workflow.

7. Add in a workflow name and a name + email address. Make sure the “from” name is something they’ll recognize from your website.

8. Under Trigger, select Merge field value changes, select your merge field (in this example it’s CMUPGRADE) and then type “yes” in the Merge field value is box.

9. Now create your delivery email. You only need to add one, with a message thanking them for grabbing their copy of the content upgrade and a link to that content upgrade.

That’s it!

The good part now is that all you have to do to create more content upgrades is add another hidden merge field. Just go into MailChimp for WP, then Forms and click Duplicate (swap out the previous merge field name for the new one) and then go into Automation in MailChimp and click Replicate for the automation sequence (changing of course the trigger to the new merge field).

Once you do this once or twice, all the tech bits will seem easy and go very quickly. Creating highly valued content upgrades to get folks to subscribe to your site, well, those are typically more difficult. But with a bit of research, trial and error, and testing – you’ll become a certified content upgrade pro (if such a thing exists) in no time.

If you want to learn more about using MailChimp to help your business, sell your product or grow your audience, check out my new video course, ChimpEssentials.com.

And because Sujan is so awesome, use the code <a ” href=”https://chimpessentials.com/chimp/14/”>SUJANRULES to get $40 off, until March 31st, 2016.

Paul Jarvis is a certified MailChimp expert and teaches a popular online course that helps you understand and use the features you’re already paying for in MailChimp – called Chimp Essentials