Landing Pages 101: How to Supercharge Your Email Marketing Program

Here’s a short quiz: what’s the largest social network in the world?

If you said Facebook, you’d be close. At more than 800 million subscribers Facebook is a giant in the industry.
But there’s another social network that eclipses Facebook.
The Radicati Group, in a May 2009 study, reported that users of this social network numbered 1.4 billion. This number isprojected to reach 1.9 billion by 2013.

What is this social network? Email.

It’s no wonder the father of email Ray Tomlinson claims that email is the largest social network in the world!

Maybe you should do some email marketing
With numbers that large it’s a no-brainer. You should probably make email a central part of your marketing toolbox.
In our quest to help you become an Internet marketing expert, here is our “Landing Pages 101” guide“How to supercharge your email marketing program.”

Get them to subscribe
Sending email blasts to a list of cold email addresses is a big no-no. This is called spam, and there are serious consequences for spammers. In the digital age you need to apply the principles of permission marketing, because consumers have the power to shut you out if they don’t want to hear from you.
They delete your unsolicited emails. They ignore your unwanted phone calls. They throw away your junk mail.

But what do consumers want?
They want information that will help them get through their dayand improve their life – and they are looking for trusted sources that can provide them with this information every day.
If they like what you offer, you might become that trusted source. You might even convince them to subscribe to your email newsletter. If you market using social media, paid advertising, online events, or in-person events, you should offer your prospects an opportunity to subscribe to your email newsletter.
Direct them to a landing page with compelling copy explaining why they should subscribe to your email list. You can then enroll this email list into your email sequence software
Offer your potential subscribers something of value if they subscribe. Suppose a you wrote a blog post called “How to Lose 20lbs. Without Breaking a Sweat.” It goes viral on social media.
Hundreds of people Re-Tweet it or share it on Facebook.
People click on the link, read your fantastic blog post, then see a button asking them to subscribe to your newsletter.
They click on that button which takes them to your landing page asking them to subscribe to your newsletter. Will they subscribe? Not if you don’t provide a compelling reason.
So offer them a compelling reason. Offer them something of value, something really useful and delicious. This is what Sonia Simone calls a “Birthday Cake.”
To find out exactly what she means you need to subscribe to her email newsletter “Content Class.”

But here are a few birthday cake examples:
• Offer an eBook with useful tips and tricks that your readers would appreciate.
• Offer a 10 part (or 20 part, or 50 part) email series. It can be a free e-course, or just a series of tips delivered over time. This could be the same content as the eBook, but instead of giving your subscribers the information all at once, you’re giving it to them in bit-sized chunks over time (you need to use an autoresponder…more on this later).
• Offer a free trial of your product or service.
• Offer a discount coupon for your product or service
• Offer them a free, limited version of your product

Use a landing page with well-written persuasive copy to convince your prospects of the benefits of your free giveaway (or birthday cake), and why they should subscribe.

Use an autoresponder
The email autoresponder is one of the most valuable tools for an Internet marketer.
The autoresponder lets you send serialized email content automatically over time.
For example, you may offer an email series called “10 Steps to a Beautiful Yard.” One day after a subscriber signs up for your newsletter they get the first email in the series.
Three days later they’ll get the second email. Three days after that they get the third email, and so on.
This is great for you because you write the content once, and it goes out automatically every time somebody signs up.
It’s great for your prospect because she gets free valuable content in small doses, allowing her to consume the content during breaks in her busy day.
But don’t forget to sell her something.

For every three educational emails, send one promotional email
Another sage piece of advice from Internet marketing diva Sonia Simone (you’ve got to subscribe to her email newsletter to get all the goodies).
If all you provide your email subscribers is free content they’ll start to get suspicious. If all you provide is promotional content, they’ll unsubscribe or worse, mark you as a spammer.
Let them know ahead of time you’ll be sending some promotional messages every now and then.
But when you do send something commercial (try your 30-day free trial; fill out a survey on your current IT environment; come to your new hair salon’s grand opening) make sure you direct them to a landing page.
Don’t try to sell them within your newsletter. It’ll feel weird to your subscribers, and might ruin the rapport you’ve established with them. Instead, invite them to “click here” to visit a landing page where you will provide them with the latest compelling message on your offer.
A landing page is designed specifically to close the sale, or at least convert subscribers to the next level of commitment.

Conclusion
With 1.9 billion users by 2013, email is the most powerful “social network” on the planet. If this article hasn’t convinced you of the importance of email marketing, the sheer numbers should.

To make your email marketing work follow these steps:

• Get your website visitors to subscribe
• Offer potential subscribers something of value
• Use an autoresponder to automate your email marketing
• Send 3 educational emails for every 1 commercial email

And use a landing page for the important transition points: to persuade them to subscribe and to sell your offer.
There are many great autoresponders on the market, but we recommend Doppler.

We also recommend Lander, our upcoming landing page platform, so you can build beautiful, high-converting landing pages in minutes. Click here to sign-up for our waiting list and email newsletter.