Study: Email Marketing Campaigns Need Better Landing Pages

A review by Silverpop of 150 email marketing campaigns’ landing pages has found that many fail to grab attention quickly and some are confusing and cluttered, despite studies showing that up to 50% of visitors to landing pages will abandon the page after a mere 8-second glance.

Some landing pages quickly grabbed attention and kept readers interested, while others were easily dismissed and quickly discarded, according to “8 Seconds to Capture Attention: Silverpop’s Landing Page Report.”

Some key findings from the report:

• The confusion of arriving at a web page that doesn’t match the look and tone of the email can lead visitors to abandon the site:
  • Yet 35% of the landing pages reviewed by Silverpop didn’t have the same look or tone of the email that generated the click.
  • 29% of B2C companies posted landing pages that didn’t match the email, compared with 41% of B2B companies.
• To reinforce the call-to-action that generated the email recipient to click a link in the first place, best practice is to repeat the offer on the landing page:
  • However, 55% of landing pages didn’t repeat the strong promotional copy found in the email.
  • A full 63% of B2B landing pages failed to do so.
  • 52% of B2C landing pages did not do so.

• Taking a clicker to a website’s homepage generally fails to deliver on the promise inherent in the email’s call-to-action:
  • Yet 17% of email marketing campaigns dumped recipients on the homepage.
  • Just one-third of recipients were taken to a landing page especially created for the email
  • Half were taken to a page within the website, albeit a relevant one.

• Customers and prospects can end up at a landing page via various routes, so capturing email addresses of those who are not in the company’s database, but have arrived at the page, is essential:
  • But 35% of the landing pages didn’t include an opt-in request.
  • Half of B2B landing pages include opt-in requests.
  • 30% of B2C landing pages did so.
• Asking too many questions can lead prospective customers to become wary and frustrated enough that they abandon the process.
  • Nevertheless, 45% of landing pages that included forms required more than 10 fields to be completed.
  • 32% had between 6 and 10 fields.

About the study: Silverpop’s Strategic Research Team registered to receive emails from 150 top online marketing companies. Landing pages reached from clicking links in each email were evaluated for 14 elements, such as matching the email leading to the page and/or the company’s website, ease of navigation, amount of copy and design formats.