Landing pages are like your newsletter’s storefront. Good ones stop people in their tracks and make them excited to find out more. While building a storefront requires time, materials, and a lot of hard work, anyone can create an effective landing page in just a few hours.
Read on to discover the exact steps you’ll need to take, from clarifying your offer to building trust and optimizing your page. Finally, we’ll share tips for promoting your page and nurturing people who sign up.
Let’s go!
Step 1: Build your landing page
Effective landing pages have a compelling offer, a signup form, social proof, and benefits. Combined, these elements increase the likelihood that people who visit your page will be converted into subscribers.
To show these tips in action, we’ve built a landing page for a fictional email marketing newsletter. Follow along to create a page of your own. You can see the finished landing page in the screenshot below.
(Source: Built with MailerLite)
Create a tempting offer
An offer that appeals to your target audience is the most important factor in landing page success.
There are two types of offers you can use to grow your list.
- Focus on your newsletter
The first option is to focus the landing page on the benefits of signing up for your newsletter. Think about why people would want to read your newsletter and what they’ll get out of it.
For our email marketing newsletter landing page, we highlighted the fact that people who sign up can grow their businesses with proven email marketing strategies.
- Use a lead magnet
The second option is to promote a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a special offer or resource that offers a ton of value to the subscriber. The right one can be a bigger signup incentive than simply receiving a weekly newsletter.
A suitable lead magnet for our fictional newsletter could be any of the following:
- instant access to ten of our most popular marketing strategies;
- an in-depth guide to an area of email marketing;
- access to a community of small business owners using email.
The downside of lead magnets is that some people simply want the freebie and aren’t necessarily interested in your newsletter. This can lead to lower subscriber engagement.
Prioritize your subscription form
Now that you know what you’re offering, you can start building your page. Begin by putting your subscription form at the top of the page to highlight your main offer.
Here’s a common format you can use:
- headline: Display your main benefit;
- description: Provide further details;
- sign-up box: Let people enter their email addresses;
- CTA: Encourage people to act.
We used this structure to create a subscription form for our landing page. Check it out in the image below.
(Source: Built with MailerLite)
Consider the landing pages of your favorite newsletters. Many of them will follow a similar format.
Add social proof
Social proof builds trust and encourages the fear of missing out (FOMO). These factors incentivize signups.
There are many ways to add social proof to your landing page. If your newsletter is established, mention how many subscribers you have. Add the figure to the description or supporting text underneath your form, as we did below.
(Source: Built with MailerLite)
Business-to-business newsletters with subscribers who work at high-profile companies can add the logos of these companies in a landing page section entitled “Read by people from.”
Discover the companies your subscribers work at by sending a survey email. Alternatively, read the email addresses on your subscriber list and see whether anyone has signed up with a business domain you recognize.
Another option is to add reviews or testimonials to your landing page. This is possible even if you only have a handful of subscribers.
Simply reach out to your list and ask people to share a few words about why they enjoy your newsletter. You could set up an automated review request to be made once a subscriber has opened a set number of newsletters.
Once you receive reviews, display them on your website, as in the image below.
(Source: Built with MailerLite)
Social proof can come in many other forms, such as social media post embeds, awards, star ratings, reviews, and collaborations. Use the types of social proof you can access that will resonate with your audience.
Focus on benefits
Adding benefits to your page helps convince people who are still undecided to subscribe.
Consider adding one to three headings that discuss why people should read your newsletter. In the screenshot below, you can see how this looks on the landing page for our email marketing newsletter.
(Source: Built with MailerLite)
Link to past newsletter samples
Let people see what they are missing by adding links to past newsletter samples. Embed these in your landing page as in the image below, or simply link to the newsletter preview.
(Source: Built with MailerLite)
Design your thank you page
Your thank you page is the page subscribers see after they enter their email addresses. Use it to welcome them and provide relevant information.
You could ask them to do any of the following:
- click the link in your two-step authentication email to complete the signup;
- whitelist your email address in their inbox;
- look out for your newsletter on a particular day.
You can also link to previous newsletters so that new subscribers can read your content immediately.
(Source: Built with MailerLite)
You could also use your thank you page to promote a paid product, such as a newsletter subscription. Provide more details and include a link to your checkout.
Alternatively, boost subscriber growth by asking new signups to share the newsletter with their friends. If they take you up on this offer, you’ll get two subscribers for the price of one.
Step 2: Optimize your landing page
Now that you’ve finished your landing page, it’s time to transform it into a conversion machine. Do this by tracking conversions and running A/B tests.
Track conversions
Your landing page builder’s dashboard will include metrics about landing page performance. The most important number is the conversion rate, which is the percentage of page visitors who subscribe.
Tracking changes to your conversion rate over time shows which adjustments worked and which you should roll back.
Run A/B tests
A/B testing lets you create two or more versions of a page and send traffic to each one. You can compare the conversion rate of each version to see which performs better.
The key to effective A/B testing is changing only one element at a time so that you know exactly what caused the difference in conversion.
Some factors to consider testing are as follows:
- your offer: Determine whether a subscription form or lead magnet is more effective;
- your benefits: Showcase different benefits to see which one resonates;
- your tone: Discover whether people respond to a voice that is friendly, professional, or humorous;
- extra content: Test whether people respond to pages with additional content;
- design and branding: Experiment with fonts, colors, graphics, or logos to determine whether this impacts how people perceive your brand.
While creating multiple landing page versions sounds time consuming, in fact, it’s super easy with templates. Simply build your new page using your existing one as a base.
Step 3: Promote the landing page
The final step in growing your email list with a landing page is promoting it! Even the best landing page won’t convert visitors into subscribers if people don’t see it in the first place.
Here are some quick and easy ways to boost the visibility of your page.
Share on social media
Sharing your page on social media is perhaps the simplest way to tell your existing audience about your new newsletter.
The issue is that social platforms don’t like people leaving their sites. Sharing a link to your external page can lead to the site’s algorithm limiting the reach of your post.
Below are two effective strategies for getting around this.
Comment under social posts
A common technique for promoting external links on X and LinkedIn is adding them to the comment sections of your popular posts. By not adding the link to the actual post, your post’s reach is less likely to be limited.
Link in profile description
Add a landing page link to your profile so that anyone who visits it can access your landing page. Use your profile bio to explain why people should head to the page.
Use paid ads
Paid ads are a good way to get people to your landing page if you have the budget for this. The two biggest platforms are Meta and Google. Both make it easy to get your page in front of your audience.
If you target various audiences or make various offers, consider building multiple landing pages with messaging designed for each ad. This will create a consistent experience and boost your conversion rate.
You can easily template your landing page and make small adjustments for each ad you run.
Promote on your website
Add a promotional pop-up that links to your landing page on your website. The benefit of this, as compared to using a sign-up form pop-up, is that you can include more information on your page.
The key is to test both types of pop-ups to see which leads to more conversions.
Optimize your page for SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) allows people to find your website via Google. Everyone will benefit from optimizing their page such that it will show up when people search for their newsletter brand name.
Do this by adding keywords to the SEO settings in your website builder. You should also ensure that the Allow Site Indexing toggle is switched on.
(Source: Built with MailerLite)
If your domain has a lot of authority or you write in a niche without many newsletters, you could also consider creating pages to target more general terms, such as “[Your topic] newsletter.”
This will enable people to find your newsletter when they google the keyword.
Find opportunities for cross-promotion
Our final strategy is to cross-promote your page in other newsletters. Speak with similarly sized newsletters in your industry and agree to share your landing pages in one another’s messages.
Step 4: What to do when someone signs up?
Congrats! You’ve got a highly functioning landing page bringing in daily conversions.
What should you do next?
Every email newsletter will benefit from an automated welcome email that is sent when someone joins the list.
Use this to accomplish the following:
- tell people what to expect;
- ask them to whitelist your address;
- link to your lead magnet if you use one;
- share past issues of your newsletter;
- point to useful resources.
Consider adding more emails to your welcome flow if there is a long time between email sends so people don’t wait too long before hearing from you. Sending some of your most popular past newsletters is a simple way to do this with minimal hassle.
If your free newsletter is part of a funnel for a paid product or service, you could also create an email sequence that pushes people down your funnel.
Send messages that provide more information about your paid offering and provide samples that showcase its value. Then, encourage people to take the next steps, such as following you on social media, attending webinars, setting up sales calls, or joining a community.
Wrapping up
The tips in this article are all you need to start building your list with a landing page. Start by creating your page. If you follow the tips in the article, you can have one ready in an hour or two.
Then, you need to share your page to generate sign-ups. Start on social media, your website, or other channels you already have up and running.
Be sure to create a welcome email that goes out to people who join your list. This ensures their journey with your business gets off to a pleasant start.
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