The people on your mailing list would have no trouble telling you exactly why they like the offer-specific landing pages: They click a link in your email and find themselves looking at a page full of information about exactly the product or service that caught their attention!
But visitor satisfaction is only the beginning. Here are three reasons why direct marketers should be just as wild about offer-specific landing pages as their customers are. An offer-specific landing page can:
- Harvest valuable information about how well your email offer worked. (Split your mailing list, sending recipients who get one type of marketing copy to landing page A, and recipients who get another type to landing page B.) A count of visits to the pages — and click-thoughs from those pages to subsequent sign-up and purchasing pages — will tell you which type of offer works best.
- Maximize the effectiveness of segmenting your mailing list. A retailer might segment a list between, say, households with children and households without, and design landing pages that appeal to each customer group.
- Offer the visitor multiple options and interactions that flow naturally from their existing interest in the product or service. A full page devoted solely to your offer gives you room to include a few of the following options, as appropriate: click to opt-in, click to buy, click to tell a friend, click to add to a wish list, click to view or download a freebie, click to upload a contest entry, and click to leave a comment).
The benefits of offer-specific landing pages are available to any e-commerce site with nimble, flexible web publishing processes. Tip: Resist the urge to create a unique landing page from scratch for each email marketing campaign. Instead, design and code an offer-specific landing page template, then populate it with pre-existing copy, images, and links adapted to each offer. Not only will this save time and effort, but it will help you maintain consistent branding and messaging.