Email Marketing Captures the Clicks, Landing Pages Sell the Products

Contributor: Christina Galbornetti, Director, Creative Services, V12 Group

Most email campaign reporting applications provide standard, but important stats on number of emails delivered, opens, clicks and opt-outs. Although helpful, this information alone is not sufficient to determine the real success of your campaign. To truly measure the performance of an email campaign, it is paramount to have the ability to track behaviors once the consumer clicks onto the corresponding landing page. The goal of the email marketer should be to capture the clicks with a compelling email promotion…but it doesn’t end there.

Think of your email as the ‘teaser’ promotion that entices the consumer to click through to a landing page where more detailed ‘sell’ information is presented. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the email advertisement. The landing page is where you advance the reader to the desired action you wish them to take, be it to provide personal contact information or to purchase a product. It’s where all the action happens so those metrics should be carefully studied as well.

MECLABS is a science based lab that uses real-world research to help business leaders get better use out of sales and marketing technology and resources and their Managing Director (CEO) states: “Landing pages sell product, emails capture clicks that bring people to landing pages. Emails get clicks by clearly explaining offers, offering incentives, and reducing friction and anxiety. Think of email this way, you use it to start a conversation and to build trust. You know when you have successfully done so by the number of clickthroughs. The landing page is where you sell the product.”  – Dr. Flint McGlaughlin

Don’t let the email response report be the final say in the success of your campaign. The better measure is to use a service like Google Analytics that generates detailed statistics about what visitors are doing on your landing page.  This insight can be used to see what consumers do after they clicked; see what content they view, how long they stayed on the site, where they left and actions they took along the way. Most website analytics tools provide a simple tag/code that is tied to each link included in the email creative, so this is a tactic that can be easily implemented into your next campaign. More on Google Analytics

This behavioral information can then be used to better segment, profile and optimize your future marketing programs. Only by tracking conversions within and across response channels can you measure the totality of your campaign’s performance. The key take-away here is to not only focus on just the email, but spend a large majority of time developing a well optimized supporting landing page. According to SilverPop’s Landing Page Report, you only have eight seconds to capture attention once someone clicks on to a landing page. So you’ll want to make sure the landing page validates your offer and supports the conversion process quickly, seamlessly, and without distraction. You can learn more about developing effective landing pages here