Yes, You Have to Have a Landing Page, but We Promise They’re Worth it
Promotions: You set up a lot of marketing material around a special sale or a seasonal event at your company with the idea being to drive traffic to your website. You’ve already spent valuable time creating an email or social media campaign for what will be a limited time promotion. Is it worth it create a separate landing page for this campaign? Yes. Here’s why, plus three things you can do with your landing pages to really get the most out of them.
Why You Need a Landing Page
Imagine opening a promotional email as a customer. You’ve probably experienced opening an email from one of your favorite stores for a sale that you’re interested in. The email will probably have pictures of some of the items in the sale, and might feature a particular color scheme or distinctive font. If you click the link and you’re taken to the home page, what do you do? Most people experience what’s known as “losing the scent.” The home page doesn’t look like the promotional email, and no one wants to waste time clicking on different site pages looking for it. On the other hand, if someone clicks on a link in the email and is directed to a landing page with the same colors, font and words as the email, they’ll be able to keep following the scent and hopefully buy something from your site.
When a campaign doesn’t follow through with a landing page, you’re missing out on a lot potential revenue. Even if someone doesn’t do what you want them to after visiting your landing page, you can still gain a lot of valuable insights from them.
Use A/B Testing to Find Out What Your Prospects Respond to the Most
A/B testing is an effective way to discover more about what your customers like. It allows you to test out differences to see which version of a landing page gets you the most conversions. Keep in mind, you should only change one aspect of your landing page. For instance, you can have two landing pages which are identical except for the headlines. You’ll send half of your email prospects to the A landing page, and the other half to the B landing page. If version B has significantly more conversions, then you’ll know exactly why (in this case, the headline) and you’ve gained valuable knowledge on which kind of headline your prospect responds to, so that you can hopefully come up with similar ones in the future.
Be careful to make only one change for each A/B test. Making several will leave you with data that’s impossible to decipher. Did version B do better because you changed the headline, or because you changed a photo? You won’t have a way to know.
Capture Customer Information
Some campaigns and the corresponding landing pages can be a great way to find out more about your prospect. As an example, if you’re a B2B company, and you email your prospects with the opportunity to download a whitepaper, you can ask for more information about them and their company on the landing page. In this scenario, they’d need to give you the information you want before claiming their download. Since they’re receiving something in return, a lot of prospects are likely to convert, giving you a better picture of who your prospect is so you can segment your email lists and market more specifically to each prospect.
Speaking of Email Segmentation…
One thing we know for sure about email marketing is that people respond to emails when they are more specific. If you can learn about your prospects and segment them into smaller groups, it’s easier to email them with marketing material that will really appeal to them, instead of emailing them with every single thing your company offers. Keeping track of how your prospect responds to a promotional email can help you further segment your list.
For instance, if someone clicks on the link to your landing page, you’ve learned that they are interested in the product or service that you thought they were, and that they might be interested in similar offerings. In fact, if you’ve emailed them about a specific product, you can include other, similar products on your landing page to learn if they might be interested in something else.
You can always segment your list demographically, but segmenting your list based on your prospect’s intent can be much more effective.
Although landing pages may not be a permanent part of your website, the data and revenue they bring in make them an invaluable part of any marketing campaign. Zephyr is happy to help you set up a landing page for your next campaign, and help you learn about your prospects in the process. Reach out today so we can help make your next marketing campaign a success.
