Whether you’re a small, medium or big firm, growing an email list with qualified leads is essential to every business. Simply put, an email list is one of your company's most powerful tools. When your prospect chooses to subscribe, they display interest in the product, service or content you provide. This makes them a qualified lead to nurture and nudge further down the marketing funnel.

Using opt-in pages is the best way to get your prospects' email addresses and permission to send them marketing communications. Optimized opt-in landing pages will give you more value from your hard-earned web traffic. As you become more effective at acquiring quality leads, your business will grow and generate long-term sustainable income.

In this blog post, you will learn what opt-in pages are, the best practices to build one, different examples you could implement and mistakes to avoid.

Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase using these links, we earn a small commission. We only recommend tools we use and trust ourselves.

What is an Opt-in Page?

An opt-in page (also called a landing page or squeeze page) is a standalone page separate from your homepage or any other page on your website that is created to encourage prospects to share their personal information. A website visitor will “land” on the page after they click a link from an email, blog or ad they saw on Google, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, or other places on the web.

Opt-in pages are designed with a single focus or goal to encourage the website visitor to complete a specific action. This goal is known as a call-to-action (or CTA for short). You could use a landing page as a clickthrough to lead to your website or a lead generation form that will offer a free piece of content to register in return for contact information.

Opt-in pages are the best option for increasing conversion rates and decreasing cost-per-lead. Marketing experts recommend maintaining multiple opt-in pages for your business so you can target different audiences.

How to Build an Opt-in Landing Page?

To set your business apart from competitors, you need to appeal to the right audience and craft a memorable journey for your customers. Follow this 8-step process to create the ultimate opt-in landing page.

Step 1: Set Your Goal

You need to set a clear and measurable goal for your opt-in page: do you want to drive more sales for your eCommerce store, get more conversions for your agency, or generate more leads for your SaaS company? Identifying your goal is the first step in identifying the components needed on your opt-in page.

Be clear on the audience you want to target. You could target specific types of users (i.e. people who work out at home) or where they are in the sales funnel (i.e. at the end of the sales funnel, ready to buy your product). The copy, image(s) and overall messaging must be tailored to this audience.

Step 2: Write Your Ad Copy

According to research, it takes about 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website, which will determine if they’ll like to stay, so what your copy says is one of the most important things about your landing page. This starts with writing a killer headline that is memorable, simple and solves your prospect’s problem as soon as they see it.

As you write the copy for your landing page, focus on the benefits rather than the features of your product or service. Your prospects want to hear how your business will make their lives easier and solve all their problems.

If you want to learn more about how to create compelling copy, check out our previous blog post, “Copywriting: Finding Your Big Idea.”

Step 3: Write an Action-Worthy CTA

Create a call-to-action that makes the prospect feel opting into your offer is easy. Many CTA buttons display “Sign Up” or “Start Trial,” but being more specific will give you better results. Try CTAs emphasizing value over action, like “Get started for just $1” or “See Pricing.”

When you include an opt-in form, make it short and sweet so it’s easy for your visitors to fill in. The longer your opt-in form, the lower your conversion rate. The best converting forms are ones that only ask for an email address.

Avoid including links to other pages or different calls to action. A landing page should have one goal for your prospect to take action on.

Step 4: Add Social Proof

Including social proof above the fold (the top portion of a web page that’s visible without scrolling) adds credibility to the value you promise. This is the best way to get people to trust you and opt in. Social proof provides evidence that you're a good company and that other people like what you do.

If you have over 1,000 people who have used and rated your service, include that on your landing page. If a company used your service and since then has achieved success, include their testimonial.

Step 5: Create a Good Landing Page Design

Many landing pages start with a big beautiful image to show visitors what your product or service offers. If possible, use photos of real people because that will allow your visitors to connect more personally and emotionally, making them more likely to convert.

Use supporting images to visualize what you sell throughout your landing page, as most people will not read everything. Also, personalize the landing page according to your logo, brand colours, and font.

Step 6: Track, Integrate and Optimize

Once you finish your landing page, connect it to your business domain and create a customized URL. Add tracking for analytical software like Google Analytics so you can see who’s visiting your page and what actions they're taking (or not).

Integrate your page to customer relationship management software (CRM) to automatically track the leads on your page. You could use one of many different CRM tools, like ActiveCampaign, Salesforce, Mailchimp, and Hubspot, to name a few.

Optimize your landing page to make it visible to search engines by writing a keyword-specific page title and meta description. Finally, test your opt-in forms to ensure everything works the way you want.

Learn more about writing content that ranks on Google with our previous blog post, “How to Write Content That Ranks on Google.”

Step 7: Drive Traffic

Now that your page is live, it’s time to drive traffic. One way to attract your audience is through paid search or pay-per-click (PPC). PPC advertising involves creating ads that show up on search results pages. For example, Google Adwords lets you bid on search keywords for top placement. PPC landing pages will lower your cost-per-acquisition and increase conversions.

You can also drive traffic with Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin and Twitter ads. You can target a specific audience or use a lookalike audience (a Facebook segmentation tool that finds users whose demographics and interests are similar to those of your existing followers). Also, use email marketing to promote your landing page and turn your subscribers into customers.

Step 8: A/B Test

Don’t just create one landing page and expect results. Duplicate your page and test new elements to optimize your page for higher conversions. Try different versions of your headlines, image(s), and CTA buttons. By sending half of your traffic to one landing page version and the other half to another, you can gather evidence about which one works best.

There are two approaches to A/B testing: test a single change to measure its individual impact or merge multiple changes and measure their overall impact on the page’s performance. This decision depends on what is better suited for your business.

Restricting your A/B test to a single change is beneficial when you have a high traffic volume because your tests will drive results quickly. It’s also best to test functional issues where users cannot perform or receive the desired output (i.e. unable to calculate the shipping amount for a product).

Merging multiple changes is best when you establish metrics you want to improve, such as the bounce rate of your landing page. Ideally, you’d like to fix all the issues contributing to the higher bounce rate and test all the changes against the original to see if those changes make an impact. Also, testing multiple changes is best with usability issues where visitors cannot navigate effectively and efficiently (i.e. CTAs not present throughout the landing page).

Instapage, our favourite landing page software, is excellent at facilitating A/B tests. If you’d like to sign up for a free trial to check it out, you can follow this link here!

6 Opt-in Page Examples

There are many different types of landing pages, and it can get overwhelming to know which one is the best to use and when. Let’s go through 6 examples that you could use to optimize your conversion rates.

Example 1: Squeeze Page

A squeeze page is a landing page that collects email addresses from website visitors. This page will include gated content like a newsletter, e-book, webinar, or other offers. A squeeze landing page is important because it is designed for lead generation.

Your page must be straightforward and include an action-driven CTA to get users to provide their email addresses. Backlinko uses a squeeze page as its homepage to grow its email subscribers by offering SEO and website traffic tips.

Example 2: Splash Page

A splash page (or pop-up page) is an introduction to a company’s website where the user will see a large window pop-up used to promote a product or service. They are commonly used to publicize a conference, promotion or deliver information before a user can enter the site and view the rest of its content.

These pages feature a backdrop image and a little text without asking for much information in return. This splash page from J.Crew offers website visitors 15% off in exchange for their email addresses.

Example 3: Lead Generation Page

A lead generation page is similar to a squeeze page, except it collects more data like a user’s name, email address, company name, job title, and industry. This is usually tailored to your business's needs and the customer’s position in the sales funnel.

Include compelling headlines that represent the benefits of your product or service. This example from Conversio n Lab includes the prospect’s name, business email, company name and website, and traffic level from paid ads.

Example 4: Lead Magnet Page

A lead magnet page is when you offer something beneficial to your prospects in return for their contact information. This could include newsletter signups, coupons or discounts, or a webinar registration.

Great lead magnets include e-books. The example below from Officevibe has just enough content to get visitors to give the company their email addresses in exchange for the e-book.

Example 5: Pre-Launch Page

A pre-launch page is used when you have a new product or service but are not ready to unveil the offer. These pages help get early sign-ups or build a target demographic for later use.

Robinhood created a sense of urgency by using the “get early access” CTA, which is highly effective on early adopters.

Example 6: Referral Page

If you have a customer base eager to recommend your business to their friends and family, use a referral page to help grow your email list. Your customers will be rewarded for recommending your service or products, and all they need to do is enter their email to start sharing.

Bonobos offer their customers 25% off when they refer their friends to the brand. To join the referral program, they must enter their email address which is another excellent way to grow your email list!

5 Biggest Opt-in Landing Page Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

Although opt-in landing pages are one of the best tools for lead generation, you could waste your time and resources, making mistakes that will lead to poor results. Here are the five common mistakes to avoid.

Mistake 1: No Sales Tracking

You launched your landing page and are generating leads, but do you know which audiences or keywords are driving traffic and making you money? When you don't use any tracking software, you will not know what is working and what's not working.

Use Google’s ValueTrack to discover when a lead converts, where they came from, where they’re located, what keyword they used, landing page URL, and many more helpful insights.

Mistake 2: Not Enough Landing Pages

Using one landing page to appeal to all your customers will lead to poor results and set you up for failure before you start. More landing pages lead to better results because you can target specific buyer needs.

Create multiple landing pages to target different customer segments and conversion goals along each customer journey stage.

PS: You can visit our conversion rate optimization page to learn more about converting clicks into leads!

Mistake 3: Neglecting Prospects’ Concerns

You could have the best offer and landing page design, but your prospects will doubt buying into your brand. It’s difficult for people to trust a brand they are seeing for the first time, and it's important to reassure these buyers that they're making the right decision.

The best way to address doubt is with testimonials, customer reviews, and industry awards. Another tactic is to offer guarantees such as a “Money-back guarantee,” “No credit card required,” or provide your privacy policy.

Mistake 4: Slow Loading Time

Nowadays, people have high expectations of loading times. A slow loading time will allow website visitors to leave before the page is done loading. According to research, 46% of users don’t revisit poorly performing websites.

Loading times will also affect your ranking on Google and your Ad Rank, which determines whether your PPC ads show and where they appear on the page. Some key ways to avoid slow loading times are to use a fast hosting provider, keep your web code clean, test for speed regularly, and keep page redirects to a minimum.

PS: You can visit our website design page to learn how we can help improve your website loading time.

Mistake 5: Poor Mobile Optimization

Many landing pages do not have a consistent user experience for desktop and mobile. Basic design problems you will not see on desktop could appear on mobile, and failing to offer a consistent experience across devices could lead to a high bounce rate.

One of the best ways to avoid this is to use single-column layouts with a lot of whitespace and full-width sections. This type of layout is responsive and consistent across desktop and mobile.

Conclusion

Using opt-in pages for your business could help you get the most bang for your buck! By crafting the right offer to the right target audience, you have the power to transform your website traffic into high-quality leads that convert.

Read our blog post, “Building a Brand Story,” to learn how to create relatable and authentic content for your opt-in pages.

If you have any questions or want to discuss your situation, please get in touch with us. Our team of experts would be happy to help you create a plan that puts your company on the path to success.

Thanks for reading!

About The Author

Krystal Wiltshire

Krystal first got into the digital marketing world when she interned at a small agency in Montreal, Quebec where she discovered her knack for blog writing.

Since then, she has continuously improved her skills, working closely with small business owners and marketing teams in larger-scale businesses.

As a Content Marketing Specialist at Noetic Marketer, Krystal strives to create content that positions our client’s brand or company in a positive light and uplifts them to become an industry leader.

When she’s not working, Krystal loves to break into spontaneous dance sessions, look up new recipes to cook and watch her favourite crime shows on Netflix.

Who We Are

Noetic Marketer is a full-service digital marketing agency with roots in Ottawa and the GTA. We specialize in creating and optimizing digital marketing campaigns for the higher education, e-commerce, professional services, and contractors industries. As digital marketers, we strive to find solutions to every company’s lead generation challenges, creating personalized marketing strategies that suit the specific needs of our clients.

What Are Opt-in Pages? When To Use Them & Our 6 Best Examples!