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Lena Waters is the director of marketing for EmailLabs. She is responsible for all messaging, branding and lead generation initiatives, including online, print, search, email, public relations and event programs, with a strong focus on analytics to drive measurable growth in demand and revenues. Lena has nine years of experience in business-to-business marketing, with a focus on interactive and online programs, including marketing and business development positions at Wärtsilä and Thrive Media. Lena received the Stevie Award for "Best Marketer" from the American Business Awards in 2006.

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Want to Add More Conversions? Add Permission-Based Marketing to Your PPC Landing Pages

Written on
September 14th 2006
Author
by Lena Waters  |
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Opt-in option #1: Focus on the ones who (almost) got away
Targeting your opt-in invitation to the 97 percent who click — but don’t convert — helps your company turn today’s missed opportunities into tomorrow’s loyal customers. For example, at a retail site, people may abandon their shopping carts and click away to competitors — without ever telling you who they are.

To catch these visitors, your email opt-in must be placed separately from your point-of-conversion page.

For example, Abebooks.com, the world’s largest online marketplace for new, used, rare and out-of-print books, deploys PPC search campaigns with landing pages that are primarily designed to get visitors to search for, and then buy, specific titles.

But the company also knows that email marketing presents an opportunity to rekindle readers’ interests several times a year — so the company publishes three different e-newsletters that appeal to three different reader segments.

One newsletter, “The Avid Collector,” primarily appeals to visitors with a strong interest in rare books, and the appropriate PPC landing pages encourage readers to sign up. Visitors who click through find a newsletter opt-in page that adheres to many permission-based email marketing best practices, including:

• Giving visitors clear expectations of the kinds of communications they may receive, by linking to sample emails, screenshots or back issues

• Summarizing the privacy/email policy and linking to a more detailed explanation.

The newsletter opt-in captures email addresses in a separate and independent process from the checkout page, which is where those who are ready to buy supply personal information. After opting in, visitors can continue to shop, which is, of course, the primary goal of the PPC landing pages.

Abebooks estimates that about 2 percent of its PPC visitors sign up for the Avid Collector — and about 4 percent of those newsletter readers purchase books each month.

“We optimize our investment in paid search by leveraging its inherent ability to drive newsletter subscriptions,” explains Chris Burdge, marketing manager at Abebooks. “In turn, every newsletter-inspired sale by a previous PPC visitor boosts our overall paid-search ROI.”

Opt-in option #2: Convert the converters into buyers
Focusing on the 3 percent who take the desired action from your PPC landing page — thereby demonstrating a high degree of interest — can help shorten your company’s sales cycle and reactivate old leads over time. Technology, b-to-b and other companies with longer sales cycles may be best served by this approach.

To convert the converters, make your email opt-in part of your actual conversion page.

At EmailLabs, we direct visitors to a landing page where our call to action is getting visitors to register for a software demonstration. Our demo registration page features an unobtrusive invitation, just above the Submit button, to sign up for our award-winning newsletter, “The Intevation Report.”

You’ll notice that we adhere to an important opt-in best practice: We never create a pre-checked opt-in permission box. Forcing each visitor to manually check the opt-in box means fewer names added to your list — but it also means that every new name is someone who really wants to hear from you.

Close to 50 percent of the people who sign up for an EmailLabs demo also request our newsletter. In other words, nearly half of our “demo leads” give us a second chance to reinforce our value over time, independent of their interactions with our sales team.

Our permission-based approach transforms converters who may not be prepared to buy right away into bona-fide customers later on — and all because we incorporated a permission-based opt-in into our PPC call to action.

Conclusion
Adding opt-in invitations to your advertising landing pages is a smart, practical way to maximize the effectiveness of two programs you already rely on: PPC advertising and email marketing. Search advertising is frequently the biggest line item in online advertising budgets — and regular, targeted communications to PPC visitors offers a low-cost, low-effort way to extend search-program ROI.



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Reader Comments.

great article, Lena! keep it up….

Posted by Graeme Thickins | 12:45 pm on September 15, 2006.

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