Get MORE Leads, MORE Customers, and MORE Conversions Using Squeeze Pages

Squeeze pages are dedicated to collecting email addresses to help you build your email list.

• Squeeze pages help you capture email addresses easily and quickly to immediately start growing your email list.

Who Uses Squeeze Pages to Collect Emails?

• John Reese
• Frank Kern
• Rich Schefren
• John Chow
• Yaro Starak
• The list goes on…

What is the Difference Between Squeeze Pages and Landing Pages and Sales Pages?

• Squeeze pages only exist to encourage a visitor to your site to provide their email address in exchange for something – usually something that is free.
• There is little information apart from that which is absolutely essential to convince them to part with their first name and/or just their email address.
• You usually use an email marketing opt-in service like AWeber that has autoresponders set up with a series of emails that will be sent to them over a course of days, weeks, months or as long as they remain a subscriber to your mailing list/site.
• There is usually only one link out of the page and that is via the submit button or its equivalent after they provide their email address. This is a very effective strategy and conversions are very high compared to simply having a subscribe box in your sidebar.
• You then thank them by giving them something of value and redirect them to your blog, the rest of your site or a particular page on your site that serves a certain purpose.

It’s a bit like zero-friction marketing. Visitors have nothing to lose by giving you their email and everything to gain.

You might direct them to a landing page…

• Landing pages, unlike a squeeze page, may have more than one link and usually a lot more information. They are pages where readers and visitors arrive after clicking a link to get to your page, usually after a successful email marketing campaign and if you are lucky, the vast majority of people arriving at your landing page are already partially aware of what it is all about and will be more likley than a stranger to click through to your sales page.
• There is a lot more information and web copy is all important. There is so much to these definitions, that I will stop here and just briefly mention a sales page.

• Sales pages is are meant to sell something. You will have a call to action to get the visitor to confirm their payment details and at the end of it, you are hopefully making some money, e.g. affiliate income.
• You may also have additional landing pages between sales pages to upsell products. For example, somebody agrees to purchase an ebook and after they confirm their willingness but before they enter their payment details, they are invited to consider upgrading their purchase or buying additional products. This secondary landing page may be viewed by many less people but will have a higher conversion rate than the earlier landing page as visitors have already confirmed their interest.

• But, do you have something to give and do you have your blog set up to get those emails?

Who Needs An Email Capture Form?

Everyone who ever wants to spread a message - including promoting a product - to lots of people without having to pay for the privilege, needs an email capture form.

Sure, you can code in an email capture form on your site, sign up to Aweber and Mailchimp to get said code and ask people to give you their email for a free Newsletter or something, but at the end of the day your blog design is what is working the magic on your site visitors.

Don’t confuse your readers with a stack of articles and images until after you get their email address. Then, reward them by over delivering. Give them something for free – even if you got it for free – and give them quality information that helps solve their problems or fuel their fetishes.

Sharing my Learnings With You

My intention is to learn and share my learnings about the following topics in 2010:

• squeeze pages
• landing pages
• web copy
• pitch pages
• email list building
• opt-in forms
• affiliate marketing using these tools.

I have learnt a lot about blogging over the past two years, including how to put my site Thesis Theme HQ on page 1 of Google in both Australia (1st position) and the world (position 2 to 5 depending on which way the wind is blowing) for the keywords “thesis theme”. I did this with organic keywords, no paid advertising and currently have an Alexa ranking of 57,739 29,044 as at 21 August 2010.

Growing Your Blog by Growing Your Email List

Despite my success at attracting visitors and gradually building my traffic to between 5,000 and 10,000 unique visitors per day, my dilemna is taking the next step and capturing emails so I can leverage my list to make more money with affiliate marketing or simply spread the word about things that are really important to me.

Subscribers through Google reader and RSS feeds are one thing, but you don’t have much control. Your own email list gives you control.

I have recently signed up with AWeber and intend on growing on my previous successes and as usual, sharing with readers my learnings.

Note: This post originally promoted a product – a WordPress theme called Squeeze Theme. Unfortunately, it did not suit my business plan and was not quite what I expected so I got a refund and now have to learn about Squeeze Pages by alternative means.