Effective landing pages encourage those that respond to your ads and marketing campaigns to take action. Landing pages can serve a variety of purposes, but they perform best when they’re written and designed to achieve a specific objective.
The objective of millions of landing pages is to get visitors to enter their email addresses.
Are you creating dedicated landing pages to build email lists? This can produce a series of events that serve your marketing purposes:
- Quite simply, you get more leads. Email capture landing pages deliver higher conversion rates than landing pages that demand a purchase.
- When people opt-in to your email list, they give you permission to market to them.
- You can design specific landing pages to create segmented email lists. You can use these to create data-driven, lead-nurture campaigns with increased personalization.
In this post, we examine a variety of landing pages designed to collect email addresses and review the tactics some of the best email landing pages employ to increase conversion.
What is an Email Capture Landing Page?
An email capture landing page is expressly created to prompt the visitor to enter an email address.
Think of it as a transaction. Your landing page showcases a specific offer — something the visitor deems valuable – (usually) for free in exchange for an email address. Lead-generation landing pages include a form or quickly serve one to visitors when they click-through to indicate they’re interested.
Digital marketers tend to create a variety of offers, often called lead magnets. As described in this post, lead magnets might include a subscription, a guide, research report, video, webinar, mini-course, tools, coupons, bonus offer, and more. In the examples that follow, you discover useful lead-magnet strategies and see how they’re applied on email capture landing pages.
Useful Tips for Creating a Landing Page to Collect Emails
Publish an efficient page
The popular advice is to make your landing page brief. The perfect copy-length, however, is directly related to precisely what’s needed to get a response. So, instead of making it brief, make it as brief as you can. The length of your page and the detail it includes is worth testing.
Design a clear CTA
Write an action-oriented call-to-action (CTA) that presents a promise. Make your button prominent, clear and easy to find.
Write compelling copy
Though your offer is probably free, sell it with copy that highlights the benefits of responding.
Include social proof
People follow the crowd and trust the authorities. Feature social-proof tactics on your landing page, such as awards, accolades, testimonials, reviews, or any other evidence.
Request only what you need
Make your forms brief, if possible. A general rule suggests the more field-fills your form requires the less responses you get. If the aim of your campaign is to nurture leads with communications that speak to specific segments, however, consider posing optional questions and make it easy to select answers.
Showcase the offer
The lead magnet you offer is bound to be digital. Create an image that helps the visitor envisage what they’ll get, it is likely to produce higher conversions.
10 Examples of Email Capture Landing Pages
1. Close
Let’s start with a landing page design example that offers an attractive lead magnet. This landing page from Close, a company that offers a CRM platform for startups and SMBs, deliberately showcases the offer and presents a single email field high up on the page. The page continues with a brief video, six examples of what the downloadable resource offers, and it closes with a free-trial offer. It focuses on getting the visitor to provide an email address to download the template collection offered.
2. IFTTT
Creating and promoting webinars is a popular and effective way to grow your email list and reach new prospects. I reviewed a number of landing pages for webinar registration. I chose to share IFTTT’s because, unlike many of the others, it refrains from including a menu or links leading you elsewhere. The success of this campaign is measured by registrant numbers. The page’s singular focus and CTA— Register today — helps achieve this goal.
Another nice touch is the brief, a four-bullet list of what you learn in the webinar. Apply this tip to any content you promote with email capture landing pages.
3. Designli
The offer here is simply a consultation call, but kudos to Designli for nailing this email capture landing page with a number of best practices:
- No distractions — Like the IFTTT landing page, this page has no navigation menu or unnecessary links.
- Action-oriented — A strong, action-oriented headline delivers a clear value proposition.
- Simple form — The form is elegantly atop the page, again, with actionable language. It starts Speak with… and ends with a button reading, Schedule a free discovery call.
- Social proof — Before I need to scroll, Designli makes sure I know it has a 5-star rating on Clutch. When I do scroll, I find customer testimonials and an additional button to Request a free call.
4. Stitch Fix
Want to have Stitch Fix box-up and send you clothing likely to fit you well and match your tastes? It’s ready to deliver, but only after you Take your style quiz, which, of course, requires submitting an email address.
Yesterday, I purposely gave them only enough information to know I’m a man that dresses casually. Today, I received this email:
Stitch Fix demonstrates its understanding of lead nurturing here. It’s personalized my email with the information it has about me and, in a fun and non-pushy way, it nudges me to complete my profile.
5. SocialChimp
The first thing I like about this SocialChimp landing page is its simple headline that closely matches the ad I clicked. This basic tactic helps assure visitors that they’ve landed on the right page. Learn more about how to write landing page content here.
This landing page also shows a clear attempt to create segmented lists. As you see above, the company’s platform serves six vertical markets. When you click on the button that best pertains to your business, the email collection process begins and the Professional field populates automatically. It’s fair to assume the lead-nurture process to follow will include industry-specific advice.
6. GoodRx
There’s a lot going on in this GoodRx landing page, but the company makes its selling proposition clear from the get-go with a well-written, value-based headline and a simple tool that instantly demonstrates the value of its service. Next, the page provides a quick 1, 2, 3 explanation of how it works and asks for my email address.
The GoodRx landing page covers a lot of bases by also offering an explainer video, a free app, discount card, and a comparison table of sample savings. The page elements, however, are smartly ordered and the bottom line is, well, I’ll show you…
Learn more about how to design effective landing pages.
7. Salesforce
This is interesting, clicking on Salesforce’s ad leads to a blog post, which probably isn’t the highest conversion tactic the company can offer. My take is, Salesforce recognizes the decision to invest in its software will be a slow and considered one, so positioning the company as a voice of authority is of utmost importance.
As you see, the landing page offers the option to subscribe to the Salesforce newsletter, a very ‘soft-sell’ lead magnet. If you were to see the entire landing page, which includes a video, news, and related posts, you’d discover the landing page is actually a resource page.
Atop the page, however, is an offer to Try Salesforce. Clicking the button invokes the following no-nonsense landing page and an extensive free trial of its Essentials’ platform.
8. Firstleaf
You may recognize this Firstleaf landing page from our recent post about single product landing pages. This landing page is a letter from the company’s founder. It tells a brief story about how you can get great wine for less. Its primary CTA is for you to order your first shipment.
I share this landing page again, because it’s also an email capture landing page.
See, near the bottom of the page, a Plan B emerges. Firstleaf recognizes if you’re not ready to order, you may provide your email address to receive the: “best wine recommendations for the best price.” Clever. Salesforce’s landing page plan was information first, product second, Firstleaf’s is the inverse.
9. Lucidchart (A)
I find the top of this landing page interesting, not because of its design or headline, but because of its CTA, which reads, Make a diagram.
- First, writing your CTA as a command or directive is effective, especially when it’s this specific.
- Second, the landing page’s prominent Make a diagram CTA instructs visitors to get started with the platform’s most important feature, an ingenious take on a free trial.
- Third, the landing page in its entirety is a dense (bordering on overkill), homepage-like beast, so it’s wise to aim for conversion right off the bat.
10. Lucidchart (B)
Lucidchart, again? Yes. Check this out… While clicking around and browsing for email capture landing pages, I saw another Lucidchart ad and clicked out of curiosity…
The company is running an entirely different campaign in parallel. This one’s pull is an ‘8 -Steps’ guide. It’s offer is the same, but it is presented differently.
What we see here is an A/B test. It’s possible Lucidchart’s two campaigns produce far different results. If they do, it’s possible it kills the loser, and runs the winner against another variation.
That’s how you optimize your campaigns for conversion — a great final lesson. So, go forth and set up simple and compelling email capture landing pages and convert.