Email Marketing Tip of the Week – Convert with Landing Pages

In this week’s email marketing tip of the week I wanted to discuss a crucial and often overlooked way that you can convert more of your list members. Of course the most commonly scrutinized components of your email campaigns are the emails themselves. From the subject line you craft, to the content and organization of your message, who it’s from, when it’s sent and on down the list. All of that is of course still extremely valuable to you and the success of your campaigns.

The overlooked element that many individuals, small businesses and nonprofits miss is that you need to optimize your website as well if you want to turn those list members into customers, clients and supporters. This means using specific landing pages for different emails, offers and programs so that when somebody does click through to your site, you are much more likely to reach out to them effectively.

Utilizing Landing Pages to Maximize Conversions

Creating a perfect email message is only part of the battle. Let’s think about an entire list of goals you might have with one of your email campaigns. You want people to:

1. Sign up for your list

2. Open and read your messages

3. Click through to your site

4. Buy a product or service, or take another action

All too often, we all are guilty of focusing on the first three steps and then completely forgetting about the fourth. Sure, it’s great to see that people read your emails and click through to your website. But if they don’t take any other kind of action – signing up for your next webinar, buying a monthly subscription, registering for your forum… – then what was the point of it all?

Creating Targeted Email Landing Pages

So hopefully you can see the importance of targeted landing pages for your email campaigns, so how do you go about creating them?

The first step in the process is really thinking about what you are asking somebody to do. You need to have a clear picture of what kind of action you want a person to take and what it takes for them to do that. If you want them to sign up for a service, you should be linking directly to the signup form to cut out additional steps.

Brand a separate landing page including that signup form mentioning the email and your subscribers and you’re doing even better. Be sure you mention clearly whatever special offer or promotion you mentioned in the email right on the page. Be sure you are speaking about the same benefits, the same pricing and everything else as you did within your messages.

The two keys are 1) consistency and 2) eliminating unnecessary steps. Don’t send somebody to your home page if you want them to read a product review they have to then go find elsewhere. Don’t mention a free trial offer in your email and then send them to a page where credit card information is required and there’s no mention of a free trial.

If you effectively build targeted landing pages for your email campaigns, staying consistent with your message and eliminating as many unnecessary steps as possible, you’ll be much more likely to achieve that fourth goal mentioned above and convert your list members.

 Subscribe in your RSS reader