In this post, we’re going to take a look at 13 pro tips for creating a powerful, conversion-focused, email opt-in landing page in WordPress. In addition, I’ll also recommend some useful tools for you to use to create your lead capture page.

Word of warning: This post is quite long and in-depth, I hope you find the information here useful 🙂

Let me start by just saying, I love working with WordPress. I think it’s awesome.

In my opinion, it’s the tool of tools for creating professional websites.

Depending on how long you’ve been using WordPress, way back in the day, getting a professional website set up would cost you a small fortune.

And most people back then didn’t really know how to do it themselves. The world was filled with none-techies.

In 2020, almost anyone can build a website themselves using WordPress.

When it comes to creating beautiful landing pages in WordPress, it just couldn’t be easier.

We have all these wonderful visual page building and conversion tools at our disposal, there’s really no excuse for anyone not to get started.

What is an email lead capture page?

Really? OK, feel free to skip this part if you don’t need to learn what an email lead capture page is.

If you’re new to online business and lead marketing, and need to learn what a lead capture page is, then read on.

When I talk about “lead capture pages” or email landing pages, or lead generation pages, I’m referring to one thing – The dedicated ‘static’ page on your WordPress website or blog.

This page will have your email opt-in form embedded in, your marketing message, and copywriting – along with your incentives and call-to-action. All of these components will be strategically placed.

An email lead generation page is a simple page where you can send your visitors to. They can then learn more about your cause, free incentives, and hopefully signup.

Here’s an example of a basic static lead capture page I recently created for one of my clients.

And here’s my own personal email lead capture page for Magnet4Blogging.

The main difference between the two landing pages above is that the first one has an embedded form. My landing page has a call-to-action button that opens up the signup form ‘on-click’.

Do you have an email landing page?

So, now I want to ask you two very important questions, specifically regarding your “email capture page”.

1. Do you have one? And if you do, how well is it converting for you right now?
2. If you don’t have an email opt-in landing page, then why not?

Every online business should have in place measures to help them capture MORE leads. Using email to do this is one of the best ways by far.

After all, email leads is what’s really going to help you grow and profit from your online or blogging business long term, right?

It doesn’t have to be fancy

Your email landing page doesn’t have to be glamorous, it just needs to send the right message, offer an irresistible incentive, and be well-optimized for capturing leads.

Here are a couple of things you might want to do before designing your landing page.

Creating a lead capture page – Objective one: Research

Your first objective is to do some research (first), especially if you have no idea as to where to start with creating your email opt-in landing page, or how to do it even.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to be an expert marketer or a web developer to achieve your email landing page goals.

What I recommend you do is take a look at how a few other bloggers and marketers have their email landing pages set up on the websites.

Grab yourself a pen and paper so you can make notes whilst doing your research.

Here are a few key things you can dig on –

1. Where have they placed their signup form(s) or signup CTA’s on their landing page?
2. How and where are they linking to their email page from? I.e. from the main navigation menu, sidebar widget, footer section, call-to-action with links placed in-content, banners, 2-step pop-ups, external sources, etc.
3. How much copy/content do they actually have on their email landing page?
4. How have they organized the content of their landing pages? I.e. are they using short paragraphs, lists, bullet points, quotes, images, headlines, etc. Also, are they using any videos on their landing page?
5. Are they using any other type of visual content, i.e. images, infographics?
6. What kind of incentives are they using to attract new leads and how are those incentives aligned with the website’s goals? Also, check-in on the actual level of value of the incentives being given away.
7. How fast does the landing page load?

Research as much information as you can on what other bloggers are doing. Don’t copy, though, whatever you do, just research.

The idea is to learn and get some inspiration for your own unique landing page design, content structure, and incentives.

Creating a lead capture page – Objective two: Clarity

Oh boy, how is this important?

Your second objective is to create complete clarity in your mind as to what you want visitors to do when they arrive on your email landing page.

Your visitors should also have some clarity in their minds as to what is being offered to them on your email landing page.

What action do you want folks to take asides from signing up for your email newsletter?

If all you want is people to signup for emails then that’s fine, leave it like that.

However, you might want to reward your new subscribers with something more than just weekly email updates.

You might want people to…

1. Sign up and be redirected to your free amazing ‘one-time’ offer, or incentive download and thank you page.
2. Sign up and be taken to your exclusive members-only content page.
3. Sign up and be given free and exclusive access to your members-only discount page where you have your own products or affiliate offers.
4. Sign up and be redirected to a series of steps where they can benefit from more than once incentive. For example, a free eBook, followed by a free 20-minute video course, followed by a webinar, etc.

Using any kind of info-based incentive to entice and reward people to get onto your email list is one of the best conversion tactics out there.

Incentives can really help you convert visitors into subscribers, ultimately helping you to complete your conversion goal more effectively.

Just remember this if nothing else:

Anyone that’s asked to join an email list will always have in their minds two questions –

1. What’s in it for me if I signup today?
2. What am I going to benefit from by being on this website’s email list?

Overdelivering on the ‘value proposition’ can go a long way here.

Right, now that you’ve done your research and you have a clear goal in your mind for your email landing page, you’re ready to make a start.

It’s time to start creating your high-converting, lead capture page in WordPress.

Recommended tools: The tool I use and recommend for building beautiful, conversion optimized, email landing pages is always called Thrive Architect. The reason being is that, whilst there are other popular page builders out there, Thrive Architect is the only page builder in the market that has an add-on plugin available that will enable you to do A/B split testing, which is critical for creating a conversion-optimized landing page. You can learn more about it here (Affiliate link).

You can check out the video tutorial below to see how I use this very tool to develop my landing pages. The video is a sales landing page tutorial, however, the same process can be applied for creating email signup pages.

Right then, without further adieu, let’s dive into 13 amazing tips to help you create the best possible, conversion-optimized email opt-in page for your WordPress website.

Let’s do this!

13 Powerful Lead Generation Page Building Tips

#1. Use a ‘static page’ and not a ‘blog style page’

If you’re not too sure what a static page is, it’s simply a page created in WordPress that doesn’t have a time-stamp or any tags or categories allocated to it.

Static pages are awesome for creating evergreen content, amongst other things.

Pages such as your site’s contact page, about page, services page, product pages, sales pages can all be created using static pages.

#2. Keep your landing page permalink short

Keep your landing page permalink (or URL) short, sweet and relevant.

Here are some examples:

1. …yourwebsite.com/signup
2. …yourwebsite.com/jointhetribe
3. …yourwebsite.com/getonboard

For mine I use https://magnet4blogging.net/subscribe/

Why is keeping the URL short useful?

Well, for one very simple reason:

1. A short URL is easier for people to remember. And if they are able to remember it, they can come back to it later or even recommend the link to one of their friends.
   

You can also try and use an action word in your landing page permalink instead, such as – ‘/signupnow’ or ‘/getonboard’ or ‘/iwantin’.

I’m sure you can think of a few more.

#3. Create a compelling ‘actionable’ headline title

This goes without saying.

When creating a headline for your email lead capture page, make sure it’s relevant, actionable, and, of course, compelling.

• Relevant – Tell people exactly what your landing page is about and what they will get.
• Compelling – Make a promise that will turn your visitor into a subscriber for sure.
• Actionable – Tell people to take action, not to delay and signup now. Try and create a sense of urgency if you can.

You can use CoSchedule’s headline analyzer tool (Affiliate link) to help you create your compelling email landing page headline.

Here’s an example of a relevant, compelling, and actionable title:

‘Signup and get instant access to your FREE website conversion guide today’.

Give the tool a whirl today, I’m sure you’ll have some fun coming up with your own headlines.

#4. Create exceptional landing page copy

You made your headline title the best it can be, now you’ve got to back it up with some decent landing page copywriting.

Provide more information about your irresistible offers and incentives, as well as explain to your would-be subscribers exactly what they can expect to get by being a valued subscriber of your website or blog.

Tell people how they’ll benefit by receiving your timely email newsletters, and by grabbing your freebies too, etc.

If you’re unable to write some good landing page copy yourself, consider hiring someone to do it for you.

Unbounce has a great collection of articles on landing pages, click here to learn how to write great landing page copy.

#5. Keep your copy short and sweet

While it’s essential that you have good copywriting for your email landing page, at the same time, you don’t want to go overboard with the content.

Here are three things to keep in mind –

• Don’t give your audience tons of stuff to digest so that they get bored, or become overwhelmed, or worse, distracted…
• Don’t save the best bits for last. Give the best bits right away and be done with it. Don’t test your visitor’s patience on your landing page!
• Make your content scannable. Use short paragraphs and avoid using too many technical words or phrases.

#6. Use bullet points in the right places

Bullet points can be effective in a way that they help you to organize important pieces of information into digestible chunks. They are perfect for landing pages.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that during your research you found quite a few email landing pages that use bullet points.

When creating your lead capture page content, use a few bullet points here and there to highlight some of the reasons WHY people should signup.

Don’t overload each bullet point with too much info either. And use them in the right places.

Check out the following awesome post by Brian Clark on the use of Bullet points.

#7. Place your opt-in form close to the top of your page

Your opt-in form or signup form should be visible without your visitors having to scroll too far down the page to find it.

This will help with improving your conversion rates because some folks simply don’t need over-convincing to signup, especially if your headline and marketing message is spot on, and if your incentives are too good to miss.

If you decide to have a lot of content and info on your landing page, consider placing your signup form several times on the page, i.e. at the top, one in the middle, and perhaps one at the bottom.

#8. Eliminate all distractions

Again, this goes without saying.

Your email landing page visitors shouldn’t be distracted by anything other than your landing page content and opt-in form call-to-action.

I would highly recommend removing the sidebar, primary navigation menu links, and footer section from your lead gen pages if you can. Those really don’t need to be on there.

One easy way to achieve all of the above is by changing the default layout to full-width content for your actual landing page. Or, by changing the default template to ‘landing’. See image below.

If you’re using a drag-and-drop page builder tool like Thrive Architect (Affiliate link), you can start with a blank page and not have to worry about including anything else.

#9. Use some quality video content

Adding a video to your email landing page can do several amazing things for your conversions –

1. Videos help to add that all-important ‘human element’, helping you to make that positive connection with your visitors and would-be subscribers.
2. Videos can help increase your conversion by 80%.

#10. Use high-quality and relevant images and visuals.

A picture is worth a thousand words… So, make use of quality and ‘relevant’ images in your lead pages. Even if it’s just a simple image of your free incentive, maybe an eBook cover artwork.

You could even add a nice gradient background image into your landing page. Just experiment with a few visual ideas and see what you come up with.

Again, consider doing some quick research to see what others are using.

I want to mention once again, the Thrive Architect plugin (Affiliate link) can help you design a great looking email landing page with ease, so do consider checking this awesome tool out, if you haven’t already done so.

#11. A face shows authenticity

A great way to convince visitors to signup to your email newsletter, and to grab your incentives, is by being friendly and approachable.

The perfect way to be genuine and authentic online is by showing them your beautiful, smiley face.

Share something that people can relate to, you’d be surprised how throwing in some personality into your landing page copy can do wonders for your conversions.

#12. Be clear about spam and give options for opting-out

Spam is disgusting stuff, I’m actually talking about the tinned stuff by the way. I have absolute horrid childhood memories of eating spam sandwiches for lunch at school, yuk!

Email spam is not much better, I can tell you, so be clear and let your readers know how much you hate email spam too.

Since privacy is now a big thing, let your new subscribers know that you 100% respect their privacy at all times, and give clear instructions on how they can opt-out at any time should they wish to.

Be sure to include relevant information in your privacy policy page, and a consent checkbox for any marketing information you plan on sending your subscribers in the future.

Chris Ducker keeps things very simple with a clear message about respecting users privacy on his landing page opt-in form.

#13. Test your landing page

Lastly, no email opt-in landing page can be fully optimized for driving optimum conversions without doing some A/B split testing.

Seriously, you can design the best looking, fastest loading lead capture page and still see depressingly low conversion rates.

You need to know for sure what you’re doing will work long-term. So, how can you test your landing pages?

Well, if you’re using the Thrive Architect plugin to build your landing page, as I mentioned earlier, there’s an add-on plugin called Thrive Optimize (Affiliate link) which will give you all the add-on tools you’ll need to do simple but effective A/B split testing.

In fact, check out the short video tutorial I created below to see how this plugin works –

Test your landing pages for several weeks until you identify what works and what doesn’t. Then ramp it up on what works to boost your conversions even more.

It’s a wrap!

So, that’s it. We’ve come to the end of this post. I do hope you’ve enjoyed reading through the tips, and more importantly, I hope you are or will take action and put some of them to work.

I want to wish you the best of luck.

Coming Soon: Ultimate Blog Conversion Rate Optimization Video Course

I’m getting ready to launch a very special 12-lesson blog conversion optimization video course which I think you’ll find extremely valuable. Click here to learn more and to register your interest in my upcoming course 🙂

Affiliate Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links to products or services that I use in my business and therefore recommend. This means if you click on an affiliate link and make a purchase of a product or service mentioned, I may earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you. Read my full diclaimer by clicking the link in the main nav.