Landing pages are a powerful tool that can be used to serve specific and relevant content to visitors gathered from a variety of marketing channels. They are especially powerful for individuals who need to make adjustments to the web but may not access to the corporate web site. Although often associated with paid search or PURLs, landing pages (or generic URLs – GURLs) can be used with newspaper or magazine ads, radio and television spots, print collaterals, or carrier pigeons.
To get the most out of your landing page campaigns, try these tips.
1. Different medium, different rules
One of the most important items to consider when designing any web page is that the web has an entirely different set of rules than print. Make sure you have a designer who is very familiar with the differences between designing for the web and print. This includes keeping page load times in mind when adding graphics, to the problems around fixed heights, web safe fonts, screen resolutions, and the eccentricities of browsers. Even if your print designer won’t be coding the page, they must have an understanding of the opportunities and limitations within this complicated medium in order to deliver a professional, up to date design that will work cross browser and will not cause additional hours of work for the web designer.
2. Use a strong call to action
Web pages often enthusiastically over-inform the prospect about every last detail up front, forgetting that the main purpose of the page is to get the prospect to opt-in for a contact or more information.
• Does your offer stand out, or is it drowning in a sea of copy? List the relevant information and save the details for the follow up.
• Is your offer both appealing and relevant to the vertical and demographic? It takes quite a bit of trust for someone to submit their personal information, even when pre-populated.
• Is your offer interesting and relevant to the needs and interests of your prospect? You only have a few seconds to grab their attention, so make it count.
3. Critical information “above the fold”
The main purpose of most PURL marketing campaigns to get the PURL respondent to opt in to your survey, register for an event, or ask for a sales rep to contact them for more information. The survey should be short and easily finished in a few moments. The survey should be above the page break and immediately visible; the prospect should not have to scroll “below the fold”.
4. Maintain good organization and visual appeal
Current design standards employ a clean modern layout with large fonts, easy to read navigation menus, plenty of white space around elements, and a small number of high quality graphics. Remove the clutter and your message will stand out.
5. Maximize Variable Content
If your list has information such as gender, age, occupation, industry, or other demographic/vertical specific information, why not use it to personalize the landing page with artwork and copy that is specific to their needs and interests? VDP Web allows for 6 custom fi elds that act as “tags” which can serve variable images, text, and flash. As long as it is in the database, it will serve up a page that is personally tailored to each prospect. We do have a “default” setup possible in case a person does not type in their PURL, so no opportunity is ever lost.
6. Maintain consistent brand identity
You can be creative, but make sure to maintain the fi t and feel of your corporate brand across print, web site, and landing page. While there defi nitely needs to be some obvious links to the mail piece that the client received, it is best practice to incorporate the fi t and feel of your existing corporate web site as closely possible. Web visitors will often leave the landing page and visit your home site in order to fi nd out more about your company. Uniformity of fi t and feel is the cornerstone of all corporate branding. If you currently have a web site that you like, try and keep as much of the shell as possible – strip down the navigation and side links so there aren’t too many options to leave the landing page – and then incorporate the graphics and information from the direct mail piece into the body of the design. With a bit of planning it is easy to keep to the corporate fit and feel while still relating to the mail piece.
Look for part two coming shortly...
