I’m running a new test…

About a month ago, I told you about a lead quality test I was running. It meant to compare results of three different optimizationThe Performance Goal is chosen within the ad set and determines optimization and delivery. How you optimize impacts who sees your ad. Meta will show your ad to people most likely to perform your desired action. More options. That test crashed and burned quickly because it was too complicated. I’ve made some tweaks and simplified it.

Basis of This Test

I want to answer a very simple question: Do instant forms generate lower quality leads than website forms?

Reflexively, most advertisers would say “Yes, absolutely.” I assumed this. It’s expected since instant forms are so easy to complete. But I wanted to prove it one way or another.

Defining “Quality”

But, how should we define “quality”? While you could require a purchase, I’m not going to spend the many thousands of dollars necessary to generate a meaningful sample size. For this test, I want a much simpler quality goal that should be accomplished quickly.

My funnel is much different than many brands, and that can be an advantage for this kind of test. The main type of lead I want to avoid is the “dead lead.” These people provide contact information but never click on my emails. And that’s really what I want first — subscribers who actively engage with my emails and click links, driving traffic to my website.

Luckily, I’ve been using tags to track when subscribers click links in my emails for some time now. I’m able to easily isolate leads generated from the instant form and landing page (a separate page and form were created for this test), and then I could compare how many of these people clicked links.

The Ads and Early Results

The ads are identical, promoting a Beginner Advertiser email sequence.

So far, the ads have generated about a combined 500 leads.

The instant forms are generating more leads at a cheaper cost, which isn’t a surprise. Users don’t need to leave the Facebook or Instagram platform to complete these forms, and their contact information is pre-filled.

But I assumed that instant forms would generate low-quality leads, mainly because of the easy completion. Surprisingly, that hasn’t been the case so far.

Instead, the percentage of quality leads (people who have clicked at least one link in my emails) has been about the same for both instant forms and website leads (current percentage is about 25%, but this will go up with time). And since instant forms are generating far more leads, they’re also generating a greater volume of quality leads, too.

That defies my assumptions.

More to Come

This test is far from complete, but these results are interesting. I want to generate about 1,000 total leads if I can, and then I’ll let the leads sit for a month to give them time to click links. I’ll report back when I’m ready.

What are you seeing with instant forms compared to website leads? Does one generate higher quality leads than the other?