You'd be crazy to create a direct mail package that got everything right -- but with a reply coupon that was bland, irrelevant, and hard to use.
Yet that's exactly what happens all the time with fundraising landing pages: The email is full of energy and great reasons for people to click through ... but when they do, they end up on a landing page that virtually chases them away with its ineptitude.
MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog, talking to commercial marketers, offers 7 Ways to Improve Your Landing Pages. These apply very well to fundraising landing pages:
- Have a Clear Call to Action
- Use Benefit-Driven Copy, not Product-Focused Copy
- Match the Message of Your Ad With the Message of Your Landing Page
- Use Trust Elements (for us that would be seals of approval from watchdogs or other third parties)
- Keep It Simple
- Remove Navigation (no need to distract people; if they're on the page it's because they're intending to give)
- Test
These are great suggestions, and most of them are not being practiced on fundraising landing pages. That last one -- Test -- might be the most important of all. Don't let your instinct be your only guide. Just as what you like in direct mail is most often flat-out wrong, your opinion can lead you badly astray online. Test to find out the truth.
Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 30 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you'll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com. 
