Digital Marketing Consultant

Before we go through the 10 Steps of Effective Email Marketing Lead Generation Conversion, it is important you take the following recommendations into consideration when it comes to composing the email messages you will be sending to your prospect list.

• Ensure your prospect list has complete lead information – If you are purchasing a list to email (whether it be from one of our email lead generation partners or a list provider), you will want to make sure this list contains complete lead data (name, title, company, phone, industry etc.)  This way you are able to effectively segment your list and follow up with active prospects more efficiently later on in the process.

• Don’t be afraid to segment your list to test your messages – Email is a great mechanism for testing your offers and messaging. Rather than sending one message to your entire prospect list, try segmenting your list into separate groups and sending different messages to each group.  This will allow you test which offers resonate more with potential prospects. From there you can then update the messaging used in your other lead generation initiatives.

• Send a compelling email message – We can offer a number of pre-written email marketing messages as examples. Use these as the basis for composing your email message and communicating to your prospect database. Messages can range from generic (Who are We?) to more offer-specific messages (A special product or service with its features, advantages, and benefits).

• Make sure any URLs in your email are set up to be tracked – As you read through the 10 steps in the next section, you will see that it is essential you have all URLs in your email set up so you can measure clickthroughs. This can be easily done in any email system you are using for your email lead generation initiatives.

• Be sure to drive visitors to your website or a unique landing page – Make sure one of the URLs in your email drives them to a page on your site or a unique landing page that will give them more details on your services and also drives them to a form to submit a request to be
contacted.

After composing your emails using the recommendations above and sending them to your prospect list, you will want to go through the 10 steps outlined in the next section. These steps will help to ensure you see higher conversions when it comes to generating leads using email marketing.

When you think of a smooth landing, I am sure you immediately think that is what you want all your airplane landings to be.  The importance of a smooth landing page for your products goes without question. But the landing page is key to your success in getting visitors to act.

The landing page is the web page inviting your online visitors to take action as they search for information that is relevant to their interest.  Some businesses use separate landing pages and others will use their home page as their landing page.  Is setting your landing page to be your home page a good or bad idea?

Landing pages are simply web pages where visitors are invited to land when it comes to the search on the Internet, or whenever the ad on the Internet.

Many people make the mistake of making its home page on the Internet as the landing page for their ads. If your home page has a call-to-action that relates to the key search terms, then maybe the home page is the right landing page, but not often.

When designing a landing page, your landing page must be relevant to the keywords and content that you placed on your ad. It is also important that the landing page asks your visitor to take action, which is to buy your product, fill in a form, download something, or call.

A final word

Do not get us wrong.  It is not enough for you just to have a landing page; it must be a great landing page!  Landing pages have a certain design which you can study in our free wisdom book.

You can spend a lot of money to generate traffic to your site, but if your landing page is not designed to convert the traffic to action for the financial good of your business, your time and money are wasted.

A landing page that has "conversion architecture" with a great design and includes a compelling offer can successful create the conversions you seek.  Creating a good landing page is done through experience and testing.  The landing page should navigate easily (or not at all) and the offer needs to be obvious to the visitor as they spend only seconds scanning your page.  You do not want your visitor to have to search for the offer.   The basic message or content is needed for the search engines, but your visitors will only be scanning and glancing.  The proper use of attention getters such as bullets, headlines, images, etc are natural eye catchers for the visitor.

Creating a good landing page is more than just good wording on a white page.  Some creativity is essential in building a compelling landing page.   There is an art involved with landing page development, and without it, you will not have an effective landing page.

The ultimate goal of your landing page is to gain conversions.  That is, you want your traffic to be compelled to take your offer, make that purchase, sign up for your newsletter, or download a white paper.  You only have a few seconds for each visitor to get this action before he/she is mosing on down the search trail to another website.

Your visitors landing matters to your profitability and financial success, so visit, carefully evaluate, and test your landing page to see just how creative and compelling it is for a visitor.

For a complete description of how to set up a landing page, see page 117 in our Wisdom Book.

You have to set your business goals before you can ever accomplish them: 

• What is the purpose of the landing page?
• What type of website to you have? 
• Is it Ecommerce that is transaction focused? 
• Is lead generation the purpose or does it have to do with establishing your brand and building relationship? 
• Are you looking add members to increase your database? 

The best marketing technique is to start at the point of sale and follow the visitors back to the point of first contact for some answers regarding measuring success.

Once you have determined what is considered success, you will then need to determine who your ideal customer is.    It is important to understand, it is NOT about you!  This is not the place to tell your story.   You want to give the visitor what he/she is looking for.

It is important to know to whom you are telling your story to before telling it.   To help define your customer by creating a customer with name and demographics.  If you have several types of customers, you must also prioritize them by importance.  If you try to attract too many different types of customer, you will end up not attracting any of them.   Knowing to whom you are selling will allow you to create content which will be appealing to THEM.

In the book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” Steven R. Covey said to begin with the end in mind.   When it comes to designing your landing page, you must know what both you and your CUSTOMER want.  The end is your starting point.

 If you want some serious information about marketing on-line, go to The Wisdom Book.  Don't be intmidated by the size, but be aware that most information is written after page 96.

• Continuity in visual presentation from landing page to website

When the visitor decides to go further and to visit the website related to the landing page, the visual effect should be recognizable.

• A clear message

There should no ambiguity in the message presented. And this message must motivate the visitor to take action because it satisfies a need for economic advantage (savings) or for personal benefit (improvement).

• One message (no clutter)

The page should be spacious, uncluttered, and contain ONE message.

• Same message on landing page as on website

The message from the landing page needs to be the same message found on the website.

• Enable social media marketing

The page should facilitate the use of sharing the message with others through buttons for Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

• No navigation

The page should not be complicated with any extra navigation outside of taking action on the message.

• Minimum reading

It may be sad, but it is a fact: People do not read.  The message on the page needs to be the bare minimum.

• A/B testing

You cannot know what structure or text works best for the landing page until you do some comparative testing...trying one version and throwing out another.

• Build trust

You need to build trust for your offer, most often done with a guarantee of some sort...money back, full return policy, etc.

• Secret Ingredient

And, finally, I have a secret ingredient which I would be happy to share with those who contact me. Send me your name and email, and I will email the secret (no sales gimmick; just a secret you should know) back to you.

Over a hundred years ago Mark Twain made the statement “I don’t have time to make it short”.   It is easy to write content but to write concise content in restricted space can be a much bigger challenge. 

When does less-is-more apply?

•    Trying to place all the relevant material on the portion of your visitors screen that is visible.   At first glance if your visitors do not find what they are searching for they will simply click away.  To get your visitor to scroll down below the viewable portion of screen, you will have to catch their attention with what they see initially.  Give the most important information right in front of them on their screen.
•    Perhaps you have thought people read on the internet.  They don’t read; they only scan.   They will see the headlines, graphics and bullet points.  You have to grab their attention in order for them to actually read the content copy.

You landing page content must be good but be prepared understanding not everyone will truly read it.   Approximately 20% of those who visit your website will even take the time to read the content.  The content must be good, but this is where less is more.

There are three basic fundamentals in creating content with a focus on less-is-more.
1.    Create a attention grabbing headline
2.    Easy to comprehend list in bullet form
3.    Graphics that will tell the story, referred to as Hero Shot

Your headline should reflect what the visitor was searching for when they came upon your landing page.  This equates directly to the conversion factor of your marketing campaign.

You can not overlook the call to action!  You might consider using a call to action and headline with similarities since this is the portion of the page your visitors will actually read.

Next I will go through the Check List for the Landing Page covering the following points:

• Continuity in visual presentation from landing page to website
• Clear message
• One message (no clutter)
• Same message on landing page as on website
• Enable social media marketing
• No navigation
• Minimum reading
• A/B testing
• Build trust
• Thank you email can give special offer

Download the 2010 Internet Business Trends Report (in PDF):

And finally, if you would simply like to read some excellent material on the subject, go to WSIwisdomBook starting at page 93.

The components of a landing page have considerable variation but there are some basic components to use as a type of template or best practice.

It will not work to force these components in the development of your page.  If it fits use it.  Otherwise, you just need to understand the concept in general.

Branding

You will want to identify your brand on your page.  Having your brand or logo on the page will actually enhance your branding efforts overall.

Local Appeal

If you have a local presence and are looking to provide local service to a specific area, you will want to incorporate the local appeal.  Making sure you location and local phone number is included on the page.

Calls to Action

There have been books written on the topic of calls to action.  Basically you will want to guide your visitors along the path to get the result you are looking for.  Do not expect them to take the action you desire unless you lead them there.

Credibility

The Internet is full of people making claims and empty promises.  Your landing page should identify qualifications and provide a sense of confidence by  providing client feedback and reviews...and links to credibility builders.

Visitor Oriented

Images displayed representing your target market can create a sense of identify and relationship for your visitors.  Perhaps you should have a different landing page for each market segment.

Justification

Obviously, you need to provide some information or statistics to help your target market identify some reasons to justify a purchase or action.

Rich Media

People like visuals.  Rich media will engage your visitor for a longer period of time than mere text on a page.   A video demonstrating your product of service is a great way to add rich media.  For example:

Above the Fold

This phrase comes from days in the past regarding how newspapers were displayed in newsstands.  The papers were generally folded in half allowing you to view only the  top of the paper.   The headline is what attracted the viewer to the paper.  Today the fold has become the point where you would have to scroll to see more of the page than what presents on your screen.  The key here is put the things of importance above the fold.

Clarification

Send a clear message regarding what your page or site is about, what you want them to do, and what you will do.  Clearly state these items.  Neither assume that the visitor will understand nor leave this up to the imagination of the visitor.

Bullet Lists

People scan on the internet; they do not read.  Bullet lists will get attention.

Positioning

Not only is the what you put on your page, important but there where on the page is equally as important.  Know how people view the screen.

Use these as guidelines only of how to build a great landing page, but find out more at http://bit.ly/WSIwisdomBook, or let us guide you via http://www.squidoo.com/Website_Audit