Optimizing The Page Recipients Hit After Subscribing
Keep in mind that all email marketing platforms behave differently. Because of that, this article might not be applicable to all email marketers. For example; some HTML / iframe embeds don’t redirect users after they fill out the form. For email marketers using those platforms, nothing in this post is going to be relevant. If your email marketing platform does, this post makes a very important point: Optimizing the post-subscription landing page.
Where Does Your Traffic Go After Subscribing?
What happens after a recipients enters their information into the subscription form? Does a confirmation message with instructions appear where the form was? Do they get redirected to a confirmation page? Is that page on your website or the email service provider’s website?
If your traffic is getting redirected to a different page, optimizing the page they land on is very important and can be a huge opportunity! Taking some time to make things as awesome as possible can greatly increase the user experience and make sure you don’t miss out on potential sales.
Here’s some tips for doing it right.
Make Sure The Traffic Redirects To Your Site
If the email marketing platform redirects traffic to a specific url after opting-in, that platform will usually give the option to specify the url. This gives you the option to build your own landing page and specify it in the platform. If this option is available, it’s most likely found in the form-builder or the list management feature.
By having traffic hit your site, instead of a generic landing page on the EPS’s server, you’re able to maintain your branding, site-structure, navigation, and so on. Not only does this look a lot more proprietary, but it gives the recipient the opportunity to keep interacting with your site and brand after opting into your email marketing.
There’s also less chance of the recipient closing the window instead of hitting the back button (assuming the page doesn’t open in a new window). If that happens, the recipient just accidentally terminated the interaction with your website. Something you don’t want.
Matching Specific Landing Pages TO Forms / lists
If you want to take it a step further, you’re able to tailor the content of the landing page to specific forms and lists. What is possible and how this might work will drastically vary from vertical to vertical. For example; if you were an auto dealer, you might have a different form for all your content dealing with cars, trucks, commercial, personal, ect.
If a recipient opts into the mailing list to a form associated with the business/commercial content on that site, you could have a landing page tailored to companies, rather than individuals. This increases the relevancy of the page the recipient lands on, and can provide some valuable additional information tailored to their interests.
Also Make Sure To Optimize The Welcome Email!
The subscription landing page isn’t the only first impression you’re going to make on the recipient. The welcome email is another big first impression. This is another place to let the recipient get to know more about your brand and what to expect from the email subscription.
The welcome email can be as simple as a single email, or you can go all out, turning it into an entire complex drip campaign. Also remember that you can tailor specific welcome emails (or automation series) to different forms / lists.