Landing Pages for Email Marketing

A well-written email with a compelling message, as with all marketing, is essential for success. There is another way of making an email campaign successful, the use of targeted sub-sites, or landing pages. As in any marketing effort, the more focused and targeted the message the more effective it will be. Most email offers contain links back to websites for more information. This is, of course, a good idea, but focus can be lost if a recipient is directed to a general homepage. One of the Client Fallacies in a previous Newsletter discussed the problem of expecting your home page to "do too much." A typical homepage contains so many messages and choices that it can be ineffective as a follow up to a targeted email. For example, when I send out email about our newsletter I do not point recipients to our general Newfangled website. Instead, I direct them to the newsletter itself. Sometimes though, a special offer needs a special sub-site or landing page. A targeted landing page provides specific follow-up information and will help maximize the effectiveness of email campaigns.

Email marketing, unlike many other forms of marketing, allows immediate tracking of real-time responses. I am often shocked to see how quickly responses come when sending out emails. Once we sent out an email to a client site's subscribers asking them to fill out a survey. Within 5 minutes of sending the email we had many respondents. Within an hour we had hundreds. By the next day we had thousands.

When using our advanced tracking system a user specific code is added to each link within an email. The links triggers the system to track the session and optionally can email me a notice as each person responds. I can then look up these user's sessions before I follow up with my marketing effort.