Squeeze Pages: What Are They and How They Generate Leads

Digital marketers will tell you when it comes to online lead generation, you have two very important tools at your disposal. They’re pretty simple: All you need is a search engine and an email inbox. 

There’s a lot to be said about search engine optimization (SEO), lead generation and digital marketing, but once you get new visitors to your website, how can you collect their information? How can you put your brand in their inbox?

For inbound marketing, capturing email addresses is an important step to gather new leads. After all, email marketing works:

Email marketing has an average return on investment (ROI) of $38 for every $1 spent.

With that kind of ROI, those email addresses you capture via your website are like 24-karat gold. By the end of 2020, the total number of email addresses will reach 3 billion. Email marketing still has a very important place in digital marketing and lead funneling.

One useful tactic to capture emails is a squeeze page. Here’s what you need to know about building squeeze pages that actually work.

Table of Contents

• What Is a Squeeze Page?
• Comparing Squeeze Pages and Landing Pages
• A Well-Oiled Machine: What Should Happen When Someone Provides Their Information Via Your Squeeze Page
• OK, So How Do Squeeze Pages Generate Leads?
• Tips to Improve Your Squeeze Page Conversion Rates
• Squeeze Your Brand Into the Picture

What Is a Squeeze Page?

When you want to get more leads into your conversion funnel, then turn them into email subscribers and customers, you need a squeeze page.

A squeeze page is designed with one goal in mind: to squeeze the contact information out of the people who visit your website. It’s all about lead generation.

The only goal of a squeeze page is to collect email addresses and contact information from prospective customers. While landing pages may have several goals all coexisting in one place, a squeeze page is only after that email address. A squeeze page usually consists of just a few elements:

• A headline.
• A short passage of supporting text.
• A form with either one or two form fields for the visitor’s name and email address.

Comparing Squeeze Pages and Landing Pages

To best understand what a squeeze page is, maybe it’s best to rule out what a squeeze page isn’t: It’s not a landing page.

Landing pages can stand on their own. They have one single conversion goal. Perhaps that’s signing up for a webinar, signing up for a free trial, enrolling in your email newsletter or viewing a particular product page.

This means the information provided on each landing page varies and so does the information you’re requesting from your page visitor. Maybe that’s their email address, their mailing address, their credit card information or just a click-through to the next page.

So how does a squeeze page differ?

Remember that old lesson in geometry? “All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.”

It’s the same with squeeze pages. In reality, all squeeze pages are landing pages, but that doesn’t mean that all landing pages are squeeze pages; it’s a specific type of landing page. For squeeze pages, the goal is always the same:

Obtaining your visitor’s name and email address.

Squeeze pages might have content offers for things like e-books, white papers, podcasts or other gated content but always with the same request for contact information in exchange. Landing pages have a wider range of goals and uses. Squeeze pages can show up anywhere on your website!

A Well-Oiled Machine: What Should Happen When Someone Provides Their Information Via Your Squeeze Page

Now that you’ve got their information, what’s next?

The moments after your website visitors give you their contact information via your squeeze page are crucial. You should have an automated process so you can snap into action.

What needs to happen once you capture email addresses?

• Provide the content you offered right away—we call this the lead magnet.
• Display a thank-you page to answer questions and share your visitors’ next steps.
• Send an automated message to remind and thank your new contacts for sharing their information, also letting them know what kinds of emails they will receive from you.
• Keep in touch by following up with your email marketing drip campaign to move your new leads down the funnel closer to conversion.

Online sales leads have a relatively short lifespan. In fact, if businesses don’t reach out to contact new leads within five minutes or less, they risk losing them forever.

Why not reach out right away? When they share their contact information with you, they are at the peak of their interest in your brand. You have to act fast!

So, if you’re asking yourself, “Do squeeze pages work?” The answer is that they do but only when you contact your leads quickly. Once you’ve got a new contact added to your email list, it’s time to take action.

OK, So How Do Squeeze Pages Generate Leads?

How does a squeeze page work? How does it help you generate leads? The answer is a surprisingly simple one:

It works because you designed it to work.

Squeeze pages generate leads when they are well thought out and have a valuable offer that your website visitors can’t pass up. Your goal is to make your offer on your squeeze page as enticing as possible. What should this entail?

• Useful, helpful, informative content like an email course, white paper collection, e-book, or even templates or design ads that your visitors can use.
• A choice: Take the offer or leave the page. This is why it’s so crucial that your offer is a good one. It doesn’t have to be a 900-page novel, just really solid, desirable content that can truly benefit the reader.
• A simple design. You don’t need fireworks and a 2,000-word pillar page leading up to your form fields. Content bloat will only distract from what it is you want to accomplish, and that’s collecting their email address, sharing your content and generating a new lead.

Tips to Improve Your Squeeze Page Conversion Rates

If you’re on the search for the best squeeze page templates or the right squeeze page software for you, there’s no secret formula. It’s all about keeping it simple. Here’s what you should know about building a successful squeeze page from header to call-to-action button:

• Ensure your page offer matches your medium. In other words, share something that needs to be delivered in your lead’s inbox. They don’t need to share their email to watch a video, but they do need to share their email for you to be able to share a white paper or e-book via email. As Wordstream puts it, “The best offers are those that align with the user data you’re asking for.” Email courses work well for this because your visitor understands that you’ll continue to offer them deliverable content to their inbox on more than one occasion.
• Don’t offer too much. You can actually offer less than you think you should. There’s no need to overload your leads with too much information; they’re busy enough! New leads aren’t ready to invest more than a few minutes in a new company, so keep it brief.
• Keep your form field number low. Too many companies ask their new leads for too much information. With too many form fields, new leads can get overwhelmed and irritated. Ask too much, and it becomes increasingly clear to your prospects that you are harvesting and collecting their information. Bottom line, short forms = ❤️
• Flip the script on your CTA button. Your prospects want to know what they are getting when they share their information on your squeeze page. Rather than highlight what they need to do to get information, you can accentuate what they get and what you can do for them when they take action. “Get Your Free Tips” not “Submit”
• Use a splash page, not a pop-up. In a survey of almost 19,000 consumers, more than 50% said that pop-ups negatively affected their opinion of the advertiser, and nearly 40% said that it affected their opinion of the website itself very negatively. Don’t interrupt your website visitors’ flow as they browse your website with pesky pop-ups.

One idea? Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko, recommends using your home page as your squeeze page. It’s short, crisp, clean and to the point. The simpler and more streamlined things are, the better.

HubSpot also shares the following information about how to create a squeeze page with an impressive conversion rate:

• Implement the element of social proof. How well does your product or service serve your customers? Include one or two testimonials or reviews to help convince your website visitors to share their information.
• Incorporate exceptional graphics. Too much clutter or poor-quality graphics can look unprofessional at best. You want your graphics to be clean and captivating.
• Test your squeeze page. Through A/B testing, you can improve your conversion rates by discovering what works and what works even better.
• Keep your copy short. Your supporting text should be compelling and concise without too much extra language. It just needs to provide relevant information and convince your reader to provide their email address; that’s it!

You can also find usable, strong squeeze page templates here.

Squeeze Your Brand Into the Picture

Squeeze pages aren’t just about collecting email addresses; you’re not collecting baseball cards or figurines that sit in a binder or a glass box to look at and enjoy on your own. Squeeze pages are about building relationships. Once you have that email address, you can start on the path of creating a partnership with a new client.

At ThinkFuel Marketing, we take inbound marketing very seriously. We’ve got the tactics to help you generate new leads and acquire new customers. Across Canada and the U.S., we’re helping brands turn their websites into lead-generating machines.

Squeeze pages are only the beginning. Let’s build a website atmosphere that helps you build your brand. Ready to dive in? Contact us today.