Does anyone use a squeeze page to drive traffic?

Never heard of a squeeze page (though I'm now going to have Squeeze Box running through my head all night).

I just looked it up, and I'm still unclear. It looks like a marketing tool for sales, how would it help with a blog that isn't selling something? Or am I missing the point, and it's for blogs promoting books?

I think it's a terrible idea.

Engage with readers. Smart engaged writing will cause them to look at your books and maybe, buy them.

My mamma had a squeeze page.

Did she wear it on her chest?

MichaelMDickson said:

Do you drive traffic to your blog or book promotion using a squeeze page?

Is anyone dedicated to building their email list?

I do both, and I'm glad I do, but I've also just started. I was hoping to talk with a few of you who focus on their email list and how they drive traffic.

Thanks

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I shared some of my input about the effectiveness of mailing lists over in this post, and how I think you'd be surprised how little sales a mailing list equates to, but you never responded so I'll focus on squeeze pages this time.

Squeeze pages are not something I like. The name itself drips of SEO doublespeak and the whole idea of just driving people to your site so you can mine e-mail addresses.... urgh.

On the reader side: I'm not an e-mail address. I'm a reader. I want to be able to go to a writer's space and learn about their books, see some covers, read their blog. I should never have to give an author my e-mail. If a writer tries to force me to give up my e-mail addy when I step onto their web page (or whatever page they've put between me and their web-page) then I'm clicking that close button and I'm gone.

On the writer side: My readers are real people, who I'd like to learn about, not marketing stats. Everything You Need To Know About SEO is a fantastic read and so is Content Is King.

Squeeze pages are like funnels that gather traffic and try to throw it all at one buying opportunity with the greatest possible sense of urgency.

That is not something I am trying to do. Here are a few reasons: I am have many books, my blogs are primarily about making sales, and I do not want to sell to marginal customers who will leave bad reviews.

MichaelMDickson said:

Do you drive traffic to your blog or book promotion using a squeeze page?

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I don't think anyone does this, strictly speaking, Michael: a squeeze page isn't in itself a way of driving traffic - it's just a way of collecting visitors' email addresses (and not a very good one for the purpose you're asking about): you'd still need to drive traffic to the squeeze page, wouldn't you?

MichaelMDickson said:

Is anyone dedicated to building their email list?

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I am - very much so.

It's a very substantial component of how I've made my full-time living for the past 5 years, but I build my email lists not via squeeze pages but with an (admittedly prominently incentivized) opt-in box in a sidebar of each of my websites. The people whom I most want to subscribe, and receive my automated email series, are precisely the ones who won't opt in via a squeeze page (it took me a long time and a lot of methodical, painstaking split-testing over 6-month periods to prove this).

In a "general marketing context", squeeze pages generally build a bigger list than other methods, but that isn't typically a good outcome.

The easy and popular mistake is to imagine/assume that the biggest list is going to produce the best result/biggest income. This is actually terribly unlikely, and there are good and valid and reliable reasons for it. In simplistic terms, quality will always trump quantity, and it can (with enough understanding, effort and split-testing traffic from the same sources) reliably be shown that squeeze pages are rarely the most appropriate option.

Is that a page where you ask for someone's email address? Is it obligatory? I had a business partner for a while and she was HUGE on building an email database to send offers as a marketing tool. I don't know that it's about blogs who don't have traffic as I have great traffic but to send newsletters to which do seem to be a good marketing tool. I never did it but I do get newsletters from places where I have given my email address and some of their offerings have intrigued me so there might be something to it.

susangpyp said:

Is that a page where you ask for someone's email address?

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Yes, but it's not quite as simple as that. A page where you ask for someone's email address (so as to be able to send them email with their permission) is an "opt-in page". A "squeeze page" is a specific type of "opt-in page". (All squeeze pages are opt-in pages, in other words, but not all opt-in pages are squeeze pages).

A "squeeze page", specifically, is a page with a box for the user to submit an email address (and/or any additional contact details required/volunteered) on which the only other content is text (and/or occasionally video/audio, but not in this context) incentivizing the opt-in. That "only" is a big word: it's the defining characteristic of "squeeze pages".

In marketing language, strictly speaking a squeeze page also contains no other links to any other on-site/off-site pages, either. The only ways to get off a squeeze page are the "submit"/"sign-up"/"enrol"/"subscribe" button, the browser's "back" button and the little red cross that closes the window. Anything else is known in the trade as a "leak" (i.e. additional and unnecessary option which can serve only to reduce the conversion-rate).

People sometimes think of pages on blogs offering a little opt-in box in the sidebar with some text along the lines of "Subscribe here for update notifications" or whatever as "squeeze pages", but they're mistaken in doing so, and the conversion-rates of those "opt-in boxes" are typically a tiny fraction of those resulting from squeeze pages.

susangpyp said:

Is it obligatory?

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No; not at all. But it can be very helpful. As marketing people always say "the money is in the list". (It isn't literally true, of course: the money is really in the relationships built with the list subscribers and the extent to which they're subsequently willing to read, pay attention to and act on email communications sent out by the list-owner).

susangpyp said:

I had a business partner for a while and she was HUGE on building an email database to send offers as a marketing tool.

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Not so easy to comment without knowing more about the context, but in general, emails sell overwhelmingly more than websites do.

Ah, so it's like the pop-up windows on Upworthy and Clients From Hell? (CFH will come up automatically, Upworthy's can be triggered by skipping to the end of any of their videos)

I hate those things, and on CFH I see a lot of anger in the comments since they were introduced. They ruin otherwise excellent site designs.

EMaree said:

Ah, so it's like the pop-up windows

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No ... pop-ups are not squeeze pages.

Those are just called "opt-in pop-ups": they're not "pages" at all.

They're typically used by people who haven't themselves split-tested, and tend to monitor them only according to the proportion of first-time visitors who opt in, without appreciating that they're losing a significant proportion of their traffic as a result of using them: there are always visitors who would otherwise have returned in future (and some of them would have opted in, at a future visit), who decide not to, once they've seen the pop-up.

Marketers who have split-tested them properly tend not to use them.

Like many other items/techniques quite widely used in internet marketing, the typical "reasoning" underlying their widespread usage goes along the lines of "Well, these 'must' work well because otherwise so many people wouldn't be using them".

EMaree said:

They ruin otherwise excellent site designs.

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I completely agree. Unless they're just being tested, they're a fairly sure sign that the webmaster's "information" has come from a questionable source. But in internet marketing that's the rule, rather than the exception.

Thanks for that information Alexa. Fascinating to see some insight into why people make these decisions!