Does your website have a landing page designed to capture emails?
If the reader isn’t quite ready to book when she lands on your site, how will you follow up to book the deal?
Well, with a targeted email marketing campaign sent straight to her inbox, of course. After all, email has the highest ROI of any direct marketing channel.
That’s right. Email marketing has the highest ROI of all direct marketing channels. In 2011, email marketing campaigns earned an average of $40.56 for every dollar spent and that amount has grown since that time, according to “The Power of Direct Marketing Report,” published by the Direct Marketing Association.
With that kind of ROI, savvy tourism marketers are already focusing on email marketing campaigns. Not only are you able to target customers who already expressed interest, but you can nurture them through the sales cycle until they’re ready to book.
But first, you have to get the email address.
And the wording on your landing page might be sabotaging your efforts.
According to research from HubSpot and Data.com, six seemingly harmless words actually decrease landing page conversion rates.
So what are the six conversion killers? Keep reading…
The 6 words that kill your conversion rates
In a webinar, Hubspot’s resident Social Media Scientist Dan Zarrella and Data.com’s Jim Sinai broke down the science behind lead generation.
In their research, Zarrella and Sinai discovered landing pages that asked for prospects to contact the company had lower than average conversion rates when six certain words were used.
The six words they found to lower conversion rates are:
- Quote
- Price
- Request
- Services
- Contact
- Questions
According to Zarrella, these conversion killers stop potential customers from entering their contact information. Why? Because these words make us very aware that someone is going to call us up and try to sell us something.
And no one likes being sold to. When your audience sees these words and sense the beginning of a sales process, they go running for the hills. Without leaving contact information for you to follow up.
You could call these six words the conversion kiss of death.
In rare cases, your audience does want to be sold to. The meeting planner who needed a venue, like, yesterday? Yeah, she wants to kick off the sales process as soon as possible.
But in the vast majority of cases, meeting planners and leisure travelers are not ready to book the first time they visit your website.
And when they’re not ready, they don’t want to feel like they’re starting the sales process. They need nurturing. They want value. They seek knowledge. They have to trust you.
And an email marketing campaign can provide all of that. You just need to get the email address.
Instead of making it obvious that you’re trying to stuff visitors into your sales funnel, focus on sharing the benefits they’ll gain from receiving your emails. Provide some value, like a free visitor’s guide or special offer, and your conversions will increase.
Your Homework:
Read through your landing pages to sniff out these 6 words. How many times do you use them? And how are you going to replace them? Let us know in the comments.
And if you could share this on Twitter, I’d appreciate it.
