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.