Landing pages are Achilles heel for email marketers - Brand Republic News - Brand Republic

Landing pages are Achilles heel for email marketers - Brand Republic News - Brand Republic: "Landing pages are Achilles heel for email marketers"

by Alicia Buller Revolution UK 27-Jun-07, 11:20
LONDON - More than four out of 10 companies practising email marketing in the UK and across North America fail to repeat promotional copy through to the landing page, thereby running the risk of confusing customers who will quickly abandon the site, a new survey has revealed.
The survey, conducted by email service provider Silverpop, analysed landing pages for email promotions from 150 companies across the US & UK.
Only 45 per cent of landing pages repeated copy from the original email. And, somewhat alarmingly, in 30 per cent of cases, the look of the landing page didn't match that of the promotional email, with 17 per cent of emails sending customers to a home page rather than a promotional page uniquely relevant to the email offer.

"Landing pages can be extremely useful if you've got a complicated story to tell [your audience] and mini-sites can work well to engage the prospect with deeper messages, but the look and feel should always be consistent," says Simone Barratt, managing director, e-Dialog UK and member of the DMA email marketing council.
Other survey findings included the use of navigation bars on seven out of ten landing pages, despite their potential to distract customers, and the presence of overlong questionnaires with 45 per cent requiring more than ten fields to be completed.
"It's a bit like trying to catch water with a sieve if your landing pages aren't consistent with your email promotion," said Mike Weston, MD of Silverpop EMEA. "A clear path needs to be plotted from email through to sale to ensure customer satisfaction and ROI is optimised."
Barratt agrees: "Any decent marketer is going to ensure consistency in their communications or they run the risk of confusing and annoying prospects and customers. You have to everything you can to make their journey easy."