The most important pages on your website are your landing pages. Why? This is where you earn the trust of your website visitors, provide them something of value, and in the end, convert these folks into viable leads.
Yet, many businesses aren’t leveraging the potential of their landing pages. In this article, we’re going to talk about how to use landing pages to increase email subscribers.
If you haven’t been using your landing pages to drive your email list, you might wonder about their purpose. And, perhaps you haven’t even looked at your conversion rate. So, first, let’s uncover some information about landing page conversion rates.
Conversion Rates Uncovered
With the average landing page conversion rate hovering around 2.35%, many pages often hit conversion rates well above this, and some push well into the double digits. How do they accomplish this?
We’ve got a list of some quick tips for increasing your landing page conversion rates from good to great.
- Explain the value of your offer. Don’t make people guess.
- Reduce your website visitor’s risk. Offer a testimonial or other social proof. This helps your visitor feel more comfortable handing over their email address.
- Use scarcity. You can do this by limiting the quantity of your offer or reducing the time frame that it’ll be available. Your website visitors are more apt to sign up for your offer if it’s only available for a limited time frame, or you’re only offering a limited amount.
- Ditch landing page distractions. Create your landing page so it is simple and straightforward. You should also think about reducing navigation options so people don’t get distracted and wander off.
Now that we’ve looked at some general landing page conversion rate tips, let’s look at how to use landing pages to increase email subscribers.
Make It Obvious
When creating your landing pages to sign up more email subscribers, keep your customer in the forefront of your mind.
You want to do everything you possibly can to eliminate any barriers to people signing up for your email list. Ask yourself if your landing page design makes it easy for sign ups. Does it give visitors a succinct reason to sign up?
Of utmost importance is to make your call to action very evident. This is the most important element on your landing page as it drives the action. Your call to action should be visible, large, different from any other buttons on your page, and it must stand out.
Wondering what color call to action button to use? Test a few. While you may have read that some colors perform better than others, the bottom line is that you have to test them for yourself. While green may work for one website, blue may work better on yours. There are other choices as well from red to yellow, black and orange.
Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.
Use a minimal amount of form fields. Less is more. Don’t ask too much of your website visitors.
After all, who really wants to fill out a long form, especially if they are using their mobile phone. The goal of your landing page is to increase email subscribers, so ask for just the amount of information you need.
While you want to lower the barrier to sign up and reduce excess friction, you’ll want to test your forms and see what works best for your business.
A commonly held belief is that you can expect higher conversions with one-three form fields. Move over that threshold, and you may see conversions drop.
It’s good to remember that the risk has to be less than the value for most customers. And, since we are talking about landing page conversions to obtain email subscribers, we encourage you to ask for nothing more than email, and name if you have to.
Give Assurance
When working to increase email subscribers on your landing page, tell your website visitors exactly what to expect.
If you’ll send one email newsletter and three promotional emails per month, tell them. If you’re going to send tips and tricks, tell them.
Offer them a guarantee by telling them what they’ll receive from you and then offer them an out – in this case, an easy unsubscribe. You also want to let your landing page visitors know their email address is safe with you, and you won’t share it with anyone else.
Use the Content Upgrade
The content upgrade is a burgeoning trend in marketing and a great way to grow your email list.
What’s a content upgrade? It’s bonus content that your website visitors gain access to by providing you with their email address. This is a potentially rapid-fire way to increase your email sign ups because content upgrades are very specific to content people are already taking advantage of on your website.
Email sign up forms on content upgrade landing pages often outperform general email sign ups on landing pages.
Here’s how to create the content upgrade:
- Pick a high-traffic page on your site. For example, let’s say you sell air conditioners. Use a page that talks about how to buy an air conditioner.
- Come up with something that would make it even easier for people to buy an air conditioner – extra tips, a video, podcast, etc. The goal here is to figure out what your visitor wants most and what is most useful.
- Create it.
- Then, create an email sign-up form offering this “bonus content upgrade.” Now, you’ve given your website visitor something of ultimate value that they’ll be more inclined to sign up for than just your regular email list.
Final Thoughts
Using landing pages to increase email subscribers is great for your digital marketing strategy. Since your landing pages are the most important parts of your website, you should include email sign up forms on each page.
Test your forms – the copy, the headline, the design and the button. See what works best for your business and what increases your email sign ups and your conversions.
Are you ready to squeeze more profit out of your website and use landing pages to increase email subscribers? Great! We’re here to help you optimize your landing pages to increase conversions. In fact, we promise you we’ll do just that.
With our guarantee, you can rest assured we will increase your profits through landing page optimization.
If you’re ready to work with the leader in landing pages and conversion rate optimization, contact us today. We’ll provide you with our FREE site performance analysis so we can work on your landing page conversion rates.
Image: Kace Rodriguez