• Written by Tom Lauck, Creative-Ops

Time after time, email campaigns fall victim to poorly designed or implemented Landing Pages. It’s a common story. Eager product managers throw everything but the kitchen sink into a landing page and then complain about low conversion rates. Just recently, I worked with a client and a Vice President of Marketing who insisted on making four offers on the landing page. The email campaign promoted compliance with Sarbanes Oxley. The offer was a white paper by this company which, by the way, promoted a learning management solution.

Yet, in addition to the white paper, the landing page offered case studies, webinars, and an offer for a free Demo. The reasoning went something like this: Once a prospect shows the slightest bit of interest, we want to offer them even more, to increase their interest and the likelihood that they will want to fill out our registration form.

Trouble is, when you dilute an email campaign in this way, the most likely result is a confused prospect, who no longer knows what he or she wants. Since they’re using a browser, they can simply visit another web page, go to another bookmark, or simply close the browser entirely. And that’s exactly what they’ll do.

Sure enough, although open rates were fine, conversion rates for this campaign fell off sharply. Were they confused? You bet.

Multiple Options

One could quickly conclude that having multiple options on a landing page is bad. Don’t do it. Problem solved.

But given that you may find yourself between a rock and a hard place, here’s how to include multiple options without destroying your campaign.

We all know that, as a rule, your landing page needs to be focused on a single offer. The job of the landing page is to complete what your email started, to close the deal. Nothing more and nothing less.

If you must include additional offers, make them secondary to the main offer. For example, if your email is focused on getting people to request a white paper, focus the graphics, headlines, and overall creative presentation on that offer. Don’t feature other offers in prominent positions on the page. Don’t use large headlines that scream “Get a Free Demo!”

Instead, include additional offers as quiet checkboxes right before or right after registration questions. Something like this:

I would like to receive future email communications from (your company name).

I'm interested in trying out (your product name), please send me more information about taking advantage of your free trial.

Please have a representative from (your company name) contact me.

This way, your landing page has a chance to accomplish its main mission: conversion of the offer promoted in your email. As long as your additional options don’t interfere with this mission, your conversion rate should be fine.