Email offers a unique opportunity for businesses. It's the only way to directly reach individual customers on a large scale, creating a new avenue for targeted marketing efforts.
The challenge lies in building a solid email list. Capturing an email during the checkout process is straightforward, as the customer is already converting on your website—the job is essentially done. The real challenge is gathering emails from an audience outside of your immediate customer base.
One of the most effective solutions is to use a dedicated landing page for this purpose. But what does this process involve, and how should we approach creating one? Let’s get into it.
What is an email capture landing page?
An email capture landing page is a page on your site, typically orphaned from the wider domain, meaning it is unable to be navigated to normally. This page has one express purpose - to encourage visitors to fill in a form that will obtain their email addresses and supporting personal data.
The challenge lies in actually capturing the email addresses. Very few people will give you access to their inbox for free - we need to provide a tangible incentive that is enticing enough for a visitor to make the transaction.
In many cases, this can be as simple as a discount on future purchases with your brand, but many B2B and service-focused brands will provide advice, guidance, and expertise in return for the email information.
For those looking for fresh promotional content, integrating promo newsletter ideas that highlight exclusive content or offers can further enhance the perceived value of signing up.
Brands generally leverage social media and influencer marketing strategies to drive traffic to their pages. This gradual increase in loyalty—from unawareness to social awareness to email contactability—is part of a long-term sales funnel that ideally leads to a sale in the future.
Tip: If you’re looking for a tool to help you launch fast, Leadpages makes it easy to build professional-looking landing pages with built-in sign-up forms—no coding required.
When should you use one?
An email capture landing page is best served as part of a wider marketing strategy, integrating tools like email marketing to maximize reach and engagement. For businesses seeking to source more conversions with a high rate of return, email marketing is an ideal candidate.
Email marketing is most effective when your brand has a wealth of expertise to share or operates in a fast-paced industry with a stream of fresh products to share with an audience. Unfortunately, email campaigns are measured by the quality of the outreach itself - there’s little value in emailing a captured audience if you’ve got nothing to say!
Benefits of email capture landing pages
Email capture landing pages offer numerous benefits. While the impact may vary depending on your industry and implementation, most businesses can expect to experience the following advantages.
Helps to generate leads
At a fundamental level, email capture is just another tool as part of the ultimate goal of generating leads and securing more business for your brand. The important factor to consider is that email marketing sits high in the marketing funnel - users have willingly and actively given you the ability to contact them personally.
This level of trust translates to a measurably significant increase in conversions over other outreach methods. Additionally, once you’ve captured the email, you have a long-term link to that individual to work with. This ensures your brand stays at the forefront of their mind, leading to further improved chances they’ll purchase from you in the future. Several sales email templates can be used to help generate leads once you’ve captured a reasonable list.
Bolsters your outreach efforts
An effectively managed email campaign can be the cornerstone of your wider outreach efforts. Social media and email outreach can work hand-in-hand to create a unified messaging strategy that engages customers across the entire sales funnel and positions your brand as an expert in your field.
There’s no real alternative to email marketing for direct contact with an audience, so it is something your brand should engage in to ensure you’re making the most of the outreach opportunities out there.
Utilizing an email marketing dashboard can significantly enhance this process by providing real-time analytics and performance indicators to optimize your campaigns. Incorporating tools like Outlook categories can help you organize and segment your emails more effectively, ensuring targeted and personalized outreach.
Fosters long-term relationships with invested customers
As you have a method of contacting your audience on a personal level, it is a spectacular way to build a closer relationship with your audience.
Email outreach is a measurable way to understand how your audience responds to your brand and consumer messaging, and email tracking tools offer metrics on open rate, click-through rate, and more.
How to design the perfect landing page
With the benefits established, it is time to start designing a killer landing page. There are several steps to take when building your first page, though the effort invested can be used for future campaigns, so don’t rush to nail the initial implementation.
We’ve broken down the process into actionable steps and recommend taking time during each to ensure the best output. As with all forms of marketing, it is key to be considerate of your target audience and design for their needs above all else. Use any previous data you have to support your efforts here and follow conversion rate optimization techniques to get the best results.
1. Have a worthwhile lead magnet or offer
There’s very little reason for someone to just give you their email address out of goodwill. To provide a reasonable incentive for them to part ways with their privacy, we need to offer value that matches the sacrifice.
Some of the most common methods of converting on an email capture landing page include:
- •Offering discounts on future purchases
- •Providing expertise through gated content
- •Offering one-time special purchases or offers
NTS online radio station is a great example of this. Their music content and radio shows are available for free, but, users can also provide their name and email address to be able to access tracklists, to be able to create “favorites” lists, and to sync their music across their devices.
There are other approaches that have been used to capture emails, but these will typically serve you best. Consider your industry and target customer when choosing your lead magnet - a call center in the cloud won’t use the same lead magnet as a fast fashion outlet, for example.
2. Structure the page to convert
When you come to design the landing page, it is important to think not only about the on-page content but the actual layout and structure of the page itself. Visitors will be landing on the page through a previous call to action (CTA) from social media or other sources, and they’ll have a goal in mind. Your design needs to respect that and support them in achieving that goal.
For example, if they’ve been enticed by a discount offer on a future purchase, make sure your design shows this off explicitly and provides a hassle-free pathway to getting that discount. This can all be achieved through savvy use of visuals, CTAs, and messaging.
Some of the important factors to consider when designing your page:
- •Header: The opening salvo needs to be on message and engage the visitor
- •Visible email capture form: The form fill to capture the email should be visible on the initial page load and should not require scrolling down to find
- •Graphics and visuals: Use brand colors and simple, easy to digest visuals that direct users to the relevant parts of the page
- •Body content blocks: Keep long-form content to a minimum and focus on succinct snippets that help support the page’s goal
By combining these elements you’ll be able to craft a powerful landing page that promotes email capture and provides the visitor with the value they’re seeking.
3. Communicate the value of the transaction
From the initial CTA to the conversion itself, you need to ensure that you communicate the value of the transaction to the user. Without this exchange in perceived value, your ability to capture emails at any scale will be severely inhibited.
It follows the same principles as the approach to transactional emails, where clear messaging and value-based propositions are the order of the day. Without these factors, your conversion rate will be greatly diminished and visitors will bounce off the landing page. In many cases, you do only get one shot to make the transaction, so nailing these aspects is critical.
A great example of this is Isabelle Grace jewelry’s email landing page. Not only is it clear what the customer can gain from giving their email, the Isabelle Grace site also introduces a bit of gamification to make the transaction fun and engaging.
4. Simple design, simple language, and simple prompts
Don’t overcomplicate things. Use direct language and messaging across the entire page and keep visual elements simple, on-brand, and use brand colors effectively.
It’s all too easy to work too hard in trying to persuade a visitor with lengthy spiels of content, but you need to only provide the necessities to succeed. Value your visitor’s time and give them the opportunity to convert without hassle.
5. Provide assurance and legitimacy of your brand
This step is vital to getting a reliable number of conversions, both through email capture pages and through sales methods. You need to provide assurance that their personal data will be handled with care, security, and respect at all times.
Screenshot taken from nytimes.com
With the rising number of cybercrimes, malware, and phishing attacks using email as a vector, and data leaks becoming a commonplace occurrence, individuals are more wary of providing companies with their email addresses. You need to show that your brand is a trusted entity and has a record of secure trading over a long period of time. Include your review platforms - social, Trustpilot, etc. - and show that any form fills use secure methods to avoid data breach risks.
6. Conduct split tests to find the right approach
Split tests, sometimes known as A/B tests, are a superb way of refining your email capture landing pages over time. Create several versions of your landing page that vary slightly and as traffic lands serve each version evenly.
The elements you alter can include:
- •Headers and primary messaging
- •Visual graphics and imagery
- •Use of color
- •CTA positioning and messaging
- •Value proposition
- •Form fill requirements
We tend to recommend only altering a small number of elements at a time, as you need to understand the reception of each change, and the more alterations the more difficult that becomes. Use website analytics tools to measure time-on-page, bounce rate, and conversion rates to get a strong understanding or reception, and make edits once you have enough data to support going in either direction.
Split testing is one of the best ways to design and iterate on a landing page and is also a vital tool in email campaigns themselves. Get accustomed to the process and use it frequently.
7. Support with brand messaging
As with all forms of external marketing, it is important to weave in your brand’s core messages throughout the content. This should highlight the unique selling points (USPs) of your brand and give visitors a reason to choose your brand over competitors.
Brand messaging should be cohesive across all your channels - organic, paid advertising, social media, and email - and you should already have a good idea of which messages are received most successfully by your target audience. Don’t be afraid to segment messages according to your target audiences too, and serve pages that suit the needs of the visitor.
The next steps
Ready to start building your email capture landing pages? These best practices will guide you in creating effective pages that become an essential part of your email marketing strategy. You'll grow your list and boost your marketing efforts in no time. Just remember to respect your audience's privacy and always provide value with every email you send.
