Article Lander vs. Squeeze Page: Which Generated More Email Subscribers? (My Niche Case Study)

If you’re reading this right now, I’m assuming you already understand the importance of building an email list….regardless of what type of business you operate.

Email List + Value Delivered = Paying Customers (I hate Math…but I LOVE that equation, and so should you!)

If you’re still not building an email list, you should be ashamed of yourself. But your ignorance is forgiven, since you were nice enough stop by and read my post….which will definitely be worth your while. There are many ways you can get people to sign up to your email list, but I’m only going to focus on two of the biggies today, the article lander and the traditional “squeeze” page.

The article lander is an “informational or educational article” about your topic. The goal is to share solid information that provides value to your prospects. Then at the end of the article, you include a CTA. This can be to purchase your product or sign up to your email list, among other things.

The traditional “squeeze” page is much simpler. You have a catchy headline, a few bullets of compelling copy about your free offer, and a sign up form. That’s pretty much it. When I see squeeze pages like this, I always think of the hype-filled, blind-copy internet marketing style squeeze pages.

You know the ones I’m talking about….

Outrageous claims like “Free eBook reveals how 92 year old Granny with a bionic hip makes $12,947/Month working just 20 minutes a day crocheting mittens.”

A little over the top? Well, you get my point then, lol.

Obviously not all squeeze pages need to be like this…and if done correctly, they can still be very effective.

I recently started a blog sharing our journey so far with our sweet furry kid Jax who we adopted in December last year. I share some stories and advice for other rescue dog owners who might be going through some of the same problems.

Since I know how important it is to build in email list in any niche, I set up a small funnel and some Facebook ads to start sending traffic. During the course of my testing, I compared an article lander vs a traditional “squeeze” page to see which would result in a higher email sign up rate.

Image snapshots from my article lander:

 

 

I had about 750-800 words of content, sharing our own crate training experience and providing some value before moving in for the kill. When a prospect clicked on that purple button to continue reading our 4 crate training tips, it would prompt them to enter their email address.

 

Image Snapshot from my “Squeeze” Page

 

Simple…not much to explain here.

Now for the $1 Million Question…

Which page performed better in generating email subscribers?

The winner was the traditional “Squeeze” page. Not only was the opt in rate higher, but the average time spent on page was higher too. This was really unexpected because there’s hardly anything to read on the squeeze page versus 800 words of content for the article lander. It was clear due to the lower time on page that people were not reading much past my headline and first couple sentences for my article lander.

Here’s my takeaway from this case study and something you should always remember for YOUR own business…

Don’t Assume Shit….Test, Test, and Test some More!

I had been reading a lot lately about how traditional squeeze pages and lead magnets were “dead”, and the way of the future for building email lists online was article landers or advertorials. FYI, in case you don’t know what an advertorial is, it’s basically the same thing as an article lander, only written in more of a news-storyish tone.

If I only followed what I had been reading from other experts, I may have never attempted the traditional style squeeze page for my dog blog. I may never have seen my opt in rate nearly triple with a few simple tweaks.

Don’t fall into this trap. Even if advice is coming from a respected authority, don’t always take it as gospel. Keep an open mind and be willing to test things for yourself. When it comes to PPC advertising, if you think you can just throw up 1 ad, 1 landing page/squeeze page, 1 funnel and set it and forget it, then you are sorely mistaken.

I’ll leave you with this gem of a quote from the advertising man himself, David Ogilvy:

Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.