Be Relevant! Email Marketing Blog

Landing Page Best Practices to Increase Conversion

1. Audience and Goal. Thinking about your intended audience and the actions you want to inspire were your primary foci in creating your email, and they’re also the core of the landing page. Construct your landing page to propel your audience toward1s the next step.

2. Design. To facilitate the unity of the experience, the creative elements must stay consistent with the email—use similar graphics, text and imagery. Keep your designs quite simple—consider losing the navigation and extra links that will distract from the primary message. Use images if they can earn their keep by relating specifically to your offer—steer clear of distracting, generic imagery.

3. Main Copy. Best practice is to use a white background behind text. Keep your copy brief, and start it off by stating the benefits of the offer concisely and in manner consistent with the email copy. It often works well to use bullet points and a large font for readability, listing the benefits in order of value. Every word should work toward getting the visitor to act.

4. Forms. If you need to gather customer information with forms, hold interest by keeping them short and sweet. Ask only for the most necessary information, clearly indicate required fields and pre-populate those fields whenever possible. Include all forms and CTAs necessary for conversion on the landing page.

5. Call-to-Action. Your landing page’s great love, its reason for existing: the big CTA. But don’t stop at one: repeat your CTA multiple times to maximize clicks. The initial CTA should live right after the summary of the offer details and needs to fall above the fold. The CTA copy must be direct and obvious and pack a punch that inspires action. Be careful not to drive your sale to soon—let the CTA match the subscriber’s place in the decision-making process. If you’re a retailer, consider using an “Add to Cart” button as opposed to something like a “Buy Now” button.

6. Other Tips. It may also be a good idea to create multiple landing pages so that they can get as specific as possible to different customer segments. Keep your landing pages live for longer than you’d expect. You don’t want people who read their messages later than the rest of the crew to be sent flying with nowhere to touch down and act.

A solid landing page that attends to best practices offers customers a memorably smooth experience with your brand while effectively increasing conversion. For even more tips and tricks, check out the new eec Landing Page Checklist.

Source: EEC

Building Effective Landing Pages

Whether you're sending a promotional email or an email newsletter, your message has specific sales or marketing goals. Most commonly the main goal of your message is to get readers to register for an event or make a purchase, or to build a relationship with readers, which hopefully leads to them making a purchase. Since readers can't take the desired action within their email, you send them to a page where they can take that action, your landing page.

Too often marketers send readers to a generic, existing page on their website instead of designing a page that is specific to the audience and the goal of their email message. Worse yet, links go to a page that doesn't house the information readers are looking for, forcing them to click further to find what they're looking for and ultimately complete a transaction. Conversion rates suffer as a result. However, a properly designed landing page can greatly increase your conversion rates.

To maximize the performance of your email messages, consider creating effective landing pages following these tips as a guideline:

Define your conversion. Before you start to design your landing page, define that page’s conversion activity. For a newsletter landing page, the conversion activity is entering an email address into a form and clicking “Accept.”

Do a little research. A little research goes a long way. Figure out what your visitor is looking for and what offers work. Build a profile of your ideal visitor. Keep this person in mind when creating your landing page. Do not construct the page for anyone else—generic and broad pages are proven to fail—and keep everything “on target.” Your email message already funnels traffic to your landing page, so visitors are expecting a very targeted message. Tailor the pages to them.

Align your landing page with the main goal of your email message. A common mistake is to design a landing page that is not specific to the goal in order to appeal to a generic visitor or prospect. Just the opposite, your landing page should be highly focused. Think about your prospect and what you want him or her to do. Then design your landing page around that one goal.

Eliminate unneeded elements. Distractions kill conversions. Strip any unneeded elements from the page, such as links to other resources, or other pages on your website. The consistent navigation bar that makes sense on a website doesn't necessarily make sense on a landing page. You don't want visitors to surf your site. You want them to complete the one action on which your landing page is focused.  So if you can, remove the navigation bar. Of course, don’t remove it if it is essential to the conversion process.  Remember your message, and if a link has nothing to with it—chuck it! 

Match the message and elements of your landing page with your e-mail message. For best results, repeat the headline from your e-mail at the top of your landing page. This gives visitors a feeling of familiarity and comfort. It tells them that they have arrived at the right place.

Keep it short and sweet. If at all possible, keep all content above the fold. If visitors have to scroll to find what they're looking for, chances are they won't find it. And if they don't find it, they won't convert.

Design for scan-ability. Just as prospects won't read every word of your email, they won't read every word of your landing page either. They will quickly scan the page, looking for further information that compels them to take an action. Make sure your headlines, sub-headings and graphics enable visitors to skim your landing page's content to quickly learn what you're offering and how it will benefit them, and most important, make sure it clearly points out how they can easily take the desired action. If your goal is sales, point readers to a page where they can place their order right there.

Provide conversion exits. Make it easy for your visitor to convert. Place conversion exits above the fold and at every scroll-and-a-half of screen space.

Important elements above the "fold"
Pay attention to the virtual fold (the bottom of the screen before scrolling). Place enough content above the fold to allow your visitor to make a decision about continuing on the site. If a visitor has to click or scroll to figure out what your site is about, the only thing they’ll click is the back button.

Lead the eye. Use typography and color to your advantage. Lead the eye along the page towards the conversion exit. Thoughtful use of whitespace, large copy and graphics can make a long page seem much shorter than it really is. Be careful though—a great image will demand a lot of eye time and if misplaced can ruin the flow of your message.
Place the important stuff (whether it’s your copy or your image) close to the middle, and never distract your user from that focal point. Avoid putting interesting material in sidebars. This pulls the eye away from the main body. If it’s interesting and valuable, keep it close to the center and use it to direct the eye.

Optimize your forms. Make the input cursor hop to the next field after a user finishes the current field. Allow the user to tab around fields. Auto-populate any fields you can.

Keep your form brief, and thoroughly pre-test it. Remember, this form may be just the first step of your sales process. You don't want to scare off prospects by asking for too much information. So remove all unneeded fields. Don't ask for city/state/province if you ask for a Zip or postal code. Focus on the essentials. If you’re asking users to register for a newsletter, ask for only an email address. You don’t need their name now. Get rid of the reset button. It’s dangerous for both the user and you.

If you are collecting personal information, provide a link to your privacy policy. Most online users are reluctant (for good reason) to disclose personal information without knowing how that information will be used. Be sure your privacy policy states that you do not rent, sell or share information with any other parties.

Test, test, test. Just like you should test your email creative, we recommend that you test different elements and copy on your landing pages to learn what works best. You may want to consider web analytics software that allows you run A/B tests or use multivariate testing to test multiple items and combinations at the same time.

Go over a checklist with your design team:

• Is the whole page focused?
• Does the message match the advertisement?
• Have you reduced all distractions?
• Is critical information above the fold?
• Are there enough conversion exits?
• Does the page enhance your brand?

Track results. If you don't know how your landing page performed, you can't tell what worked and what didn't work and you can't make necessary improvements to increase performance.

Landing pages are important to maximize the performance of your email marketing campaigns. Your email message and landing page should work together closely for best results.

Does Your Landing Page "Reward" the Reader for Clicking?

In this article, Loren McDonald says that "as a result of clicking through from the e-mail, that visitor has to be satisfied. In other words, the landing page must directly convey the information or “reward” for making the click". He says "it’s vital to have clear objectives in mind during the page design phase. Because landing pages have five standard “calls to action,” it’s necessary to decide on the primary objective for the page, and optimize the page accordingly... In the case of e-mail marketing, the landing page should clearly have as its primary objective something directly connected to whatever was offered in the original e-mail. Essentially, the page has to close the deal." Click here to read the full article.

11 Tips for Successful B2B Landing Pages

In this article on the Skatterbox blog, Luke provides these 11 tips for successful B2B landing pages:

1. Carry the message through from the advertisement: Do everything you can to make sure that you aren't pushing your traffic to a "one size fits all" landing page. If the ad that brought them was about a particular feature - then highlight that feature. If it was a discount that brought them to you...don't waste time talking up the feature set. It may be more work to create multiple landing pages...but you will definitely get more conversions

2. Personalize the content: I've seen marketers spend hours segmenting a list and crafting a highly customized message that speaks directly to each recipient...only to forward them to a generic landing page once they decide to take action! If your email program allows for personalization of content... drive that personalization through the link in the email and into the landing page.

3. Keep the form simple and above the fold: You can test this yourself, but I have ALWAYS gotten better response when the form is above the fold. And of course, its always better to limit the amount of information to only that which is necessary. Do you really need to know the state when you have the zip code? If possible its even better if you can...

4. Pre-populate the form: Want to know the easiest way to increase conversion? Pre-populate the form on the landing page. If you are driving traffic from an email campaign then you already have alot of this info...don't ask them for it again!

5. Minimize outbound links: You spent alot of money to get the visitor to the landing page so it is perfectly acceptable to drive traffic to a landing page optimized for conversion. As long as you are giving the visitor exactly what the ad promises...you are not entitled to give them access to every page of your website. If you want to force a conversion or an exit...then that is acceptable. I will usually offer a few ancillary links if they aren't ready to take action, however...the intent is obvious and I try to do everything I can to encourage the dominant call to action.

 

8 Seconds to Capture Attention: Landing Page Report

50 percent of visitors to landing pages will bail after a cursory 8-second glance. Successful landing pages must grab attention quickly and not require a great deal of effort on the part of prospects.

In their latest study called "8 Seconds to Capture Attention: Silverpop's Landing Page Report," (of which the results were presented at the Email Insider Summit in May) Silverpop found that some landing pages quickly grab attention and keep readers interested, while others are easily dismissed and quickly discarded.

Following are just a few of the key findings from the report.

Matching the look of the email: the confusion of arriving at a Web page that doesn't match the look and tone of the email can lead visitors to abandon the site. Yet 35 percent of the landing pages reviewed by Silverpop didn't have the same look or tone of the email that generated the click. Twenty-nine percent of BtoC companies posted landing pages that didn't match the email, compared to 41 percent of BtoB companies.

Repeating the email's call-to-action: to reinforce the call-to-action that generated the email recipient to click a link in the first place, best practice is to repeat the offer on the landing page. Yet a surprising number of marketers failed to do so. In fact, 45 percent of landing pages didn't repeat the strong promotional copy found in the email.

Jumping to the home page: catapulting a clicker to a Web site's home page generally fails to deliver on the promise inherent in the email's call-to-action. Yet 17 percent of email marketing campaigns dumped recipients there.

Including email opt-in requests: customers and prospects can end up at a landing page via a variety of routes, especially if someone on your email list forwarded the message. To capture the email addresses of those who have arrived at your landing page without being in your database, its essential to ask them to register. Yet 35 percent of the landing pages didn't include an opt-in request.

Download the report here and learn how your landing pages compare with other marketers' attempts to lead customers from clicks to conversions.

5 Tips for Designing the Ultimate Landing Page

In this post on the Copyblogger blog, Roberta Rosenberg give 5 tips for designing a landing page.

The web is a strongly visual medium, she says. Good design helps support the content, leading the visitor’s eye from here to there and directing them through your message layer by layer, step by step. This is especially so in the formatting of an effective landing page.

Basic guidelines:

• Scrutinize your competition’s design and organization flow of their landing pages: Go through their conversation process and note the places where you feel a bit stumped or put off. Then go back to your own landing page and compare. Consider what you could revise or eliminate for better effect.
• Put your most critical landing page elements in the upper 300 pixels of the page: Usability research shows over half of your site visitors will NOT scroll “below the fold.” So forget the warm-up copy, get right to the point, and keep your value proposition at first screen view.
• Think simple: Use a one-column format with ample margins and white space to increase reading comprehension. Break up big paragraphs into smaller paragraphs — and no more than 5 lines per. You want to encourage visitors to read and engage with your message. Dense-looking copy doesn’t get read, period.
• Be obvious and use standard usage conventions: Underline your links, be clear. descriptive and specific when describing them. No visitor should have to work to use your page or understand your message.
• Make sure your page loads quickly: There are still millions of people using dial-up. Depending on your marketing and your product/service mix, strive for an 8-second or less page load. Don’t plump your page with unnecessary graphics. Optimize essential graphics to reduce file size and load time.

Building Effective Landing Pages

Whether you're sending a promotional email or an email newsletter, your message has specific sales or marketing goals. Most commonly the main goal of your message is to get readers to register for an event or make a purchase, or to build a relationship with readers, which hopefully leads to them making a purchase. Since readers can't take the desired action within their email, you send them to a page where they can take that action, your landing page.

Too often marketers send readers to a generic, existing page on their website instead of designing a page that is specific to the audience and the goal of their email message. Worse yet, links go to a page that doesn't house the information readers are looking for, forcing them to click further to find what they're looking for and ultimately complete a transaction. Conversion rates suffer as a result. However, a properly designed landing page can greatly increase your conversion rates.

To maximize the performance of your email messages, consider creating effective landing pages following these 10 tips as a guideline:

1. Align your landing page with the main goal of your email message. A common mistake is to design a landing page that is not specific to the goal in order to appeal to a generic visitor or prospect. Just the opposite, your landing page should be highly focused. Think about your prospect and what you want him or her to do. Then design your landing page around that one goal.

2. Create a single path to your offer. You want to prevent visitors from wandering away from the path you want them to take. Therefore, eliminate unneeded elements, such as links to other resources, or other pages on your website. The consistent navigation bar that makes sense on a website doesn't necessarily make sense on a landing page. You don't want visitors to surf your site. You want them to complete the one action on which your landing page is focused.

3. Match the message and elements of your landing page with your e-mail message. For best results, repeat the headline from your e-mail at the top of your landing page. This gives visitors a feeling of familiarity and comfort. It tells them that they have arrived at the right place.

4. Keep it short and sweet. If at all possible, keep all content above the fold. If visitors have to scroll to find what they're looking for, chances are they won't find it. And if they don't find it, they won't convert.

5. Design for scan-ability. Just as prospects won't read every word of your email, they won't read every word of your landing page either. They will quickly scan the page, looking for further information that compels them to take an action. Make sure your headlines, sub-headings and graphics enable visitors to skim your landing page's content to quickly learn what you're offering and how it will benefit them, and most important, make sure it clearly points out how they can easily take the desired action. If your goal is sales, point readers to a page where they can place their order right there.

6. Lead the eye. Make good use of copy, graphics and white space to lead the reader along the path to your offer. Place images next to the most important text, as readers are more likely to read this text. Use varying font sizes to convey importance. Readers will read larger text first. Use a font color to highlight specific text, but keep the number of colors used to two or three at most (including black). Anything more will be confusing for readers. Resist the temptation to use sidebars that aren't relevant or other distracting elements.

7. If your desired action is to have the visitor fill out a form, keep it brief, and thoroughly pre-test it. Remember, this form may be just the first step of your sales process. You don't want to scare off prospects by asking for too much information.

8. If you are collecting personal information, provide a link to your privacy policy. Most online users are reluctant (for good reason) to disclose personal information without knowing how that information will be used. Be sure your privacy policy states that you do not rent, sell or share information with any other parties.

9. Test, test, test. Just like you should test your email creative, we recommend that you test different elements and copy on your landing pages to learn what works best. You may want to consider web analytics software that allows you run A/B tests. These programs alternate the version of your landing page that visitors see, and track the results of each.

10. Track results. If you don't know how your landing page performed, you can't tell what worked and what didn't work and you can't make necessary improvements to increase performance. Landing pages are important to maximize the performance of your email marketing campaigns. Your email message and landing page should work together closely for best results.

Source: SubscriberMail

Landing Pages are Critical to the Success of your Campaign

What is a landing page?
A landing page is the page where customers/prospects get to after having clicked on a link in the e-mail that you have sent them.

Why are they important?
Landing pages are an essential component of your email campaign: they help you convert visitors into leads/buyers. Poor landing pages, however, can often compromise great targeting and creative.

For each campaign you should create a custom landing page on your web site that makes it easy for email recipients to complete your desired action.

These are the items that should be included:

• main graphical element that is used in the email campaign
• compelling headline
• opening paragraph
• compelling benefit driven bullets
• a closing paragraph
• lead capture form

Always keep in mind that, on average, web visitors spend just 8-seconds scanning a website landing page before they decide to leave. This means that you should focus on what is it that you want your visitor to do on your landing page: click that button to order the product / download the white paper / view the demo / register for the event.