The Power of Landing Pages

If your email campaign is the shiny wrapper, then the landing page is the candy bar.

In your email marketing efforts, you clearly want to have all the elements in place for your reader to experience immediately upon opening your email: The Brand, The Message, and The Creative. You have that 2-second window of opportunity to WOW your reader, as we discussed in the Dec. 28 Issue. But it's what happens after the initial 2-seconds that really helps measure the success of a campaign.

Your email campaign will have several articles or stories - let's call them content elements - in each issue. Each of these will be clickable, transporting your reader to a landing page with further information and further interactive opportunities... and the chance to convert.

What do we mean by convert?

For those who may not know, in the marketing vernacular, conversion is when a prospect turns into a customer, or a shopper turns into a buyer, or to put it into our particular idiom, when your reader indicates their interest in having you assist them with a home transaction.

Priority Number One - Drive Conversions

This is the main purpose of a landing page - to drive conversions. This is done in a number of ways.

First and foremost, give readers what they expect. The reader arrived at the landing page expecting something in particular. If they clicked to continue reading an article from your newsletter, give them the rest of the article. If they clicked in order to sign up to win a contest, give them the contest registration form. In short, give them what they want first. If you pull the old switcheroo, trying to capture information before giving them what they're looking for, they'll simply click away and you've lost the game. But once you give them what they're expecting, it's far easier to ask for something in return.

Second, provide a clear-cut call to action. For instance, each monthly issue of our product for Realtors®, House & Home Digest, contains a sweepstakes. Obviously the landing page needs to ask each registrant for their contact info for prize notification purposes. However, we also ask for a little something extra - not a lot, a little. In addition to the contact information, we ask each sweepstakes registrant a few questions relating to their status as a potential buyer or seller.

Questions might include things like:

Do you currently own or rent your home?

1. Own
2. Rent

Do you plan to buy or sell a house in the future?

1. Within 6 Months
2. In 6-12 Months
3. In 12-24 Months
4. No plans

This information, along with their contact information, gets recorded, thus building upon your knowledge of each user.

Third, make the conversion process as easy as possible. In addition to the above questions, the conversion opportunity should always be present. In the case of the sweepstakes, the conversion opportunity takes the form of one further question:

Would you like to have (this agent) contact you regarding the sale or purchase of a home?

1. Yes
2. Not at this time

The Upshot

When a user chooses the "Yes" button, the Realtor® is immediately notified via email not only of the person's interest, but also of their ownership status, time-frame, price range, etc. That's a conversion. And that's the essence of the value of email marketing.

'Til Next Time

I hope you've found value in this article. Next week we'll discuss ways to reconnect with past contacts to generate new subscribers.

If you have questions or article ideas for this newsletter, please send them to me: . Expect another issue of our Best Practices in two weeks. I thank you for your kind attention.