I have a friend who recently told me she was ready to start building an email list. Up to this point, she had been relying on referrals and social media content to build her base, but was looking to leverage email to sell courses and deliver content. (She’s a dog trainer by the way) She has a really cool concept for an interactive newsletter that she’s developing to send to folks as they subscribe and lead dog owners to specific training products based on their dog’s breed and behaviors.
But, she needed to get folks to sign-up. Being newer to email marketing, she wasn’t sure what option she should go with: Was it better to throw a sign up form on her site or create a specific landing page? I detailed the benefits of each option and thought it would be worth sharing here for newer folks making a similar choice.
A sign up form is a standalone form that you install on your website or directly link in social media posts or emails. One thing worth noting about the second option: If someone clicks and goes to the form’s URL - it will just display the basic form as it’s designed in your account.
If you choose to embed a form into your website you can choose specifically where it will show up. If you don’t know how to code or do that, don’t worry. You can still add a form to your page through a plugin like our own Wordpress plugin (if you have a Wordpress site). In any case, subscribers just enter info into the sign-up form and get added to your list. Simple.
A landing page might be a bit more engaging and can be easily customized with a sign up form embedded on it. Think of this like a one page website. Beyond the form, a landing page can include products and ecommerce elements, testimonials, biographical content, and so much more. You can also customize any of the design elements on the page. Savvy users could build an entire site with more complex navigation through linking multiple landing pages.
Wordpress users can also integrate your landing page directly with your site.
Here’s another thing to consider - Some of our users will use a combination of both. They will create sign up forms that direct to custom ‘Thank You’ pages designed in our Landing Page editor when someone signs up.
There are great things about either option and you can tag subscribers coming through both. You can also trigger campaigns based on those tags.
In my buddy’s case, she went with a sign-up form to start. Her site is already beautifully designed and she just wanted something she could drop into her theme and forget about. She said she’d try that out for a bit and track results. For others looking for more options and customization - landing pages might be the better option.
Have you built successful landing pages? How is your site’s static form doing? Do you have any insights or questions?
Please share below!