A well executed email landing page can make or break your email marketing strategy or lead generation efforts. As the final piece a potential customer sees before converting, it’s important to get all aspects right.

In this piece, we’ll go over why you need a landing page for your email marketing campaigns, the key components of a high converting one and mistakes to avoid when building one.

Why you need a landing page for email marketing

Would you ever hand someone money without knowing what you’re getting in return? Probably not. The same goes for email lists. There may not be money involved, but there’s still an exchange of value. Email landing pages let subscribers know what they’ll be getting in return for providing you their email address.

They also help you qualify subscribers so you draw in attentive readers that are likely to engage, rather than disinterested ones that are likely to ignore your content and eventually unsubscribe.

As such, they help you to disqualify people from your email list. Yes, the goal is growth, however, you really only want people who want to be on it. A smaller email list with active, engaged subscribers is more valuable than a large inactive one. It will have both higher conversion rates and lower unsubscribe rates.

The key ingredients of a high-converting email landing page

Many landing page builders have drag and drop templates, also known as “no code”, to help guide your process. Whether you’re using one of these or building from scratch, keep the following in mind to build the best landing pages.

Use clear copy

When it comes to email landing pages, inaction is your biggest competition. The best way to avoid this is by having a single call-to-action (CTA).

Beyond any links on the menu, there should be no mention of other products or services and no links to other parts of your website.

When it comes to copy, clear trumps clever. An email marketing landing page is much shorter and simpler than a sales landing page or a website homepage, so don’t feel the need to over explain your offer.

On your email list sign up form, asking for people’s first and last name can be helpful for personalizing your emails and future marketing campaigns. You can also ask what type of content the subscriber is interested in receiving to help you with segmentation. Beyond that, keep the form fields on your email landing page to a minimum so it’s quick and easy to complete (which helps drive conversions).

Tell subscribers what to expect

Let email subscribers know exactly what they’ll be receiving in their inbox. One copywriting tip to keep in mind is to make “features and benefits” incredibly obvious.

Don’t stop at telling subscribers what they’ll be getting after entering their email and how it works. Take it a step further by telling them how it will improve their lives. You’ll also want to include how often you’ll be sending them emails.

For example: “Each week, we’ll send you three tips on how to save money by using a virtual assistant to run your online business.”

A welcome series of emails sent to new subscribers is a great place to follow up and expand on this to explain what they’ll be receiving, how often and to encourage them to share the newsletter with people in their network they think would benefit from your emails.

Inject social proof

Your email sign-up landing page is a great place to include snippets of subscriber testimonials expressing the value they get from your emails. Whether that’s great webinar content, helpful lead magnets, weekly newsletters, early access to new products or more.

Add an opt-out reminder

By law (e.g. GDPR and the CAN-SPAM Act), you must include an unsubscribe link in your emails. Reminding subscribers that they can opt out of your emails at any time also lowers risk and helps establish trust, which can increase conversion rates for your email landing page and reduce your chances of ending up in the spam folder.

Leverage double opt-ins and CAPTCHA

A double opt-in means a confirmation email is sent to subscribers after they submit their email address. Before they’re actually added to your list, they need to take action on this email (usually by hitting a “Confirm subscription” button or link).

This feature has two huge benefits:

1. Only active subscribers who are eager to receive your content follow through on signing up

2. Email service providers (ESPs) trust you’re a real business and not a spammer.

Mistakes to avoid with an email marketing landing page

Now that you know the purpose of your landing page and how to create one that converts, let’s go over some things you should avoid doing when building your email marketing landing page.

Using inconsistent branding and copy

Just like confusion leads to inaction, inconsistent branding leads to distrust. If you’re using a landing page template, be sure to customize it to look like your website and the rest of your online presence.

Similarly, be sure to practice what’s called “message matching”. If people are coming to your email landing page from a paid ad, make sure the copy of the ad delivers on what it promised.

For example: if you’re running lead gen ads on Facebook or LinkedIn for an ebook download, or posting about a lead magnet to your followers on social media to get them into your marketing funnel, be sure to include that people need to sign up for your email list before receiving it.

Otherwise, they may be turned off after they arrive on your landing page and see they need to subscribe to your email list before receiving the item.

Not optimizing your landing page

Building your landing page is step one. Step two is to continually improve upon it.

Landing page optimization is a constant practice and A/B testing is a simple and effective way to do this. A/B testing (or split testing) can help you figure out what copy, image or landing page design is better for conversions.

Be careful to only test one element at a time. Changing more than one element while testing prohibits you from knowing which change is driving which results.

Not keeping your landing page it above the fold

An email marketing landing page should be just that: a page. Unless you’re including social proof, your desktop version should require zero scrolling. This is often harder to achieve on mobile as the screen size is smaller, but your landing pages should be responsive and optimized for mobile, too.

Not testing it on mobile

The reason why it’s so important to optimize for mobile is that over half of all website traffic comes from mobile devices. Make sure your landing page provides an optimized user experience in this format.

Final thoughts

Getting people to your email landing page is just half the battle. The second step is getting them to convert.

Keeping them relevant, on brand and easy to navigate will help you grab attention and promote action from people who are eager to receive and engage with your emails, while detering those who aren’t.