Email Marketing Tactics #16: Use Landing Pages

Landing pages are essential for a successful email marketing campaign. Web and email users have an expectation for immediacy.  Landing pages instantly link recipients to the offer the email promised with no need to navigate.  When recipients don’t have any trouble finding what they want, there is less friction in completing the action.  Obviously as email marketers, our goal is to make it as easy as possible for recipients to take action on our offers.

If you are asking what a landing page is I’ll provide a short explanation.  A landing page is a webpage set up specifically for an email communication.  When recipients click a link in the email they arrive at the webpage which speaks directly to what the email referenced.  So they “land” on this page from an email.

Landing pages are important because there is no way of knowing how committed a recipient will be to your email offer.  Offering a landing page removes the hassle of navigating to what they want.  It also provides an immediate opportunity to build on their interaction by speaking about the offer that caught their interest.

Examples of landing pages would be:

• An Offer to Attend an Event – The landing page should have all the logistic info and a more in depth look at what the topic will be.  A next step to register or get more information (likely a form) is critical.  Speaker bios are often appropriate as well.
• Product or Service Promo – More information and feature/benefit about the product or service and a next step (likely a form) to take advantage of the offer.

Of course this is a simplistic overview of landing pages but it gets at the core of what they should contain.  Basically landing pages should support the email with more information and provide a next step, which is almost always an online form.

If you are sending recipients to your homepage or not providing a clear next step for them, then you are providing incentive for them to leave.  It’s amazing how easily online users will get frustrated and move on.  In most cases, if a recipient lands on a page from a marketing email and can’t find what they are looking for in 3 seconds, they move on.  Make sure they are getting what they want right off the bat and that’s 2 seconds more than you’ll need.