The Whitelist

Email Design Includes Landing Pages for the Mobile Device

As a follow up to our June article on making emails mobile, we asked two of our in-house technical whizzes to give us the lowdown on carrying that mobility through to the landing page. After all, if your email marketing best practices are ensuring your emails render correctly on the small screens of smart phones and tablet PCs, shouldn’t that same mobile experience carry through to your landing pages too?

Lucky for us, the team behind the scenes at ClickMail has been paying attention and they were ready to answer all of our questions about mobile landing page design. The July issue of the ClickMail Marketer email marketing newsletter offers their tried-and-true tips for rethinking-and redesigning-your landing pages. Doing so will streamline engagement for your recipients and just might give you a leg up over your competitors who may still be sending mobile users to a clunky, computer-centric landing page.

From coding to copy, fingers to forms, this brief newsletter article covers all the basics you need to know to implement email marketing best practices around serving a mobile audience…even where they land.

Once again the topic of landing pages has come up and once again we must reiterate the importance of a landing page that matches, yes matches, your email.

Consider this fictional example: If you’re sending out emails promising something specific like, let’s say specialty teas, but the link in your email goes to a landing page promoting all of your gourmet beverages, you are misleading.

That’s like a woman wearing red boots with a magenta and forest green dress—clash!
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As summer weather winds down and the mornings get chillier, we find ourselves wearing sweaters and jackets, layering for the cool morning, but ready to peel off that extra clothing when the afternoon heats up.

This is an effective way to moderate one’s comfort via clothing, but an ineffective way to “dress” your email. Your email should be scantily clad, no matter the weather or temperature.

Is your email dressed in layers? Do you have multiple calls to action? Are you trying to cram all your information into one promotional email rather than enticing people to click through to a landing page? Is your email design overly busy? Is your email marketing message unclear?
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You’d think landing pages would be no brainers for those of us in email marketing. I mean, we’re all going after opens first, click throughs second, meaning we should be paying attention to where those click throughs go. But apparently we don’t.

It seems there are still those companies linking their email marketing calls to action to a home page, or, if they are using a landing page, they’re doing a poor job of it.

It’s not that landing pages are simple; it takes a lot of effort and knowledge and testing to build a powerhouse landing page that converts at a higher rate. But there are two landing page essentials that can get you started at least, and they are absolutely necessary for effective email marketing:

• 1. Use one-Make sure you use a landing page specific to the email marketing message you’re sending out. I mean it. Don’t send them to a catch-all page or a product listing page or-worst of all-a home page.
• 2. Match the email-When someone does click through, they need a seamless experience. If you’re landing page doesn’t match the look, feel and offer of the email, you are creating friction. Friction slows down motion. That’s bad. We want to keep them moving toward conversion. So make sure your landing page matches the email that links to it in design and in message.

Over time make sure you’re paying more attention to your landing page elements, including the message, design, the information you ask for, etc. But for now, make sure you use these two ways to make your landing pages land you more customers and a higher email marketing ROI!