E-mail Marketing Campaigns Need Better Landing Pages

A Study From Direct...

Landing pages linked from e-mail marketing campaigns generally fail to grab attention quickly, according to a review of 150 Web sites by Silverpop, a Web marketing solutions provider. Furthermore, some pages are confusing and cluttered, prompting the visitor to quickly leave.

Silverpop set out to evaluate marketers' approaches, and registered to receive e-mails from 150 top online companies. Landing pages reached from messages' clicking links were evaluated for 14 different elements, such as matching the e-mail leading to the page and/or the company's Web site, ease of navigation, amount of copy, and design formats.
Among the key findings of the report, "Eight Seconds to Capture Attention: Silverpop's Landing Page Report":

* 45% of landing pages didn't repeat the strong promotional copy found in the e-mail, thus failing to reinforce the call-to-action that prompted the e-mail recipient to click a link in the first place.
* 35% of the landing pages analyzed didn't match the e-mails' look.
* 35% of the landing pages didn't include an opt-in request. It's essential to ask visitors to register because they may have arrived at your landing page without being in your database. For example, someone else might have forwarded the landing page's link to the visitor.
* 29% of consumer companies posted landing pages that didn't match the e-mail, compared to 41% of B-to-B companies.
* 17% of e-mail marketing campaigns failed to deliver on the promise inherent in the message's call-to-action, and merely dumped recipients to a company's Web site home page.

"E-mail marketers spend a lot of time and energy creating targeted, relevant campaigns, but then fail to carry the ball across the goal line due to lackluster landing pages," said Elaine O'Gorman, vice president of strategy for Silverpop, in a statement. "Landing page optimization can have a tremendous impact on e-mail marketing success rate."

"Using a home page as a landing page can be confusing," O'Gorman continued. "It's much better to create a landing page unique to the e-mail campaign whenever possible."