I admit I haven't crunched the numbers. But I suspect that, of all the page elements LeadPages® members A/B test, LeadBoxes® may be the most common. Small decisions inside these small boxes can make for a big difference in conversion rate, and we regularly report on some of the most interesting results we see. One thing sometimes confuses people who follow our A/B test posts, though. Sometimes the same LeadBox™ adjustment will have two totally different effects for two different marketers. Why would that be? I mean, are best practices totally irrelevant here? I wouldn’t go that far. We have accumulated an ever-growing body of knowledge about what generally improves a LeadBox™’s conversion rate. But there’s another major factor in play here: your brand and the audience it speaks to. You probably don't want to duplicate a LeadBox™ that gets great results for a party planner and stick it on an estate planner's website. That seems obvious enough, but the interactions between brand perception and conversion can play out in all sorts of subtler ways. And the 10 most interesting LeadBoxes® we found this month all do an excellent job of adjusting general best practices to suit their brands and appeal to their audiences. To help you make opt-in forms as effective as these ones, we’ve put together a free mega-pack of LeadBoxes® goodies for you to download—so many that there’s sure to be something inside to suit your own brand. This mega-pack includes:
- Our data-based guide sheet, “Top 10 Tips for LeadBoxes® That Work”
- 5 animated progress-bar gifs for the top of your LeadBoxes®
- 10 pro illustrations to use in your LeadBoxes®
- 100+ call-to-action buttons to trigger your LeadBoxes® on any site
Click to download all this now:
1. Heart & Moxie: Planner Page LeadBox™
What Stands Out: Why should schoolchildren have all the fun of filling out seasonally themed activity worksheets? Vicky Cook of lifestyle blog Heart & Moxie encourages women to apply planning and goal setting even to their leisure time, and offers a worksheet to make sure her readers make plenty of memories from Fall 2015. Vicky’s post includes a traditional call-to-action button, but it’s embedded in a larger, clickable graphic that previews the worksheet with the help of bright, doodle-style graphics. (You may notice that above she takes this “preview” strategy even further by photographing the worksheet in the middle of filling it out.) The LeadBox™ is just as adorable and user-friendly, adorned with her brand’s colors and logo and cheering visitors on with copy such as “Yay, you! You’re almost there . . .”
2. Robbins Madanes Training: Video Demo LeadBox™
What Stands Out: Inspirational speaker and author Tony Robbins’s charisma is absolutely central to the products and services he’s created, and this page draws on his personal power. To promote a video demonstrating one of his coaching strategies, he uses a landing page with a compelling background image of himself. When visitors click in, Tony looks at them more directly to complement the first-person copy. Tony also adds a novel field to this LeadBox™. Below their email address, subscribers are prompted via a dropdown menu to supply their level of coaching experience. This could enable routing leads onto different lists or personalizing the content mix they receive from him in the future.
3. Smart Fertility Choices: Blog Post LeadBox™
What Stands Out: Should your marketing emphasize your audience’s problems, or the solution you’re offering them? It’s an age-old question, and the answer seems to vary for different audiences and industries. On her blog about facing fertility challenges, Kym Campbell uses a LeadBox™ that lands squarely on the latter approach. She fills the image slot with a collage of luminous images of happy mothers with their babies, suggesting the rewards to be had when readers download Kym’s resources. Keeping with the warmly authoritative tone of her blog, she keeps the copy genial but to the point.
4. Chris Lester: Webinar LeadBox™
What Stands Out: This webinar page focuses on one major problem that can crop up after you’ve had children: figuring out how to pay for their college education. A strong headline lays out the webinar topic, leading to a call-to-action button that subtly introduces an element of scarcity with the text “Claim My Spot Now!” As with the Smart Fertility Choices LeadBox™, this LeadBox™ uses a photo to indicate the light at the end of the tunnel. A new college grad beams beside a call to reserve a seat at the webinar for free.
5. Minneapolis Running: Subscription-Plus LeadBox™
What Stands Out: Minneapolis Running uses an innovative strategy to segment their new email subscribers. Rather than having them select from a menu of interests inside the LeadBox™, they create a sidebar area on their site with buttons that trigger different LeadBoxes® reflecting interest in different race lengths. That strategy allows them to use the LeadBox™ to further refine visitors’ subscription preferences. Radio buttons let new subscribers choose exactly how often they’ll receive content, allaying any worry that they’ll be overwhelmed with emails. Surrounding the form fields, a sharp logo and clear copy build trust.
6. Maple Motorcycle Jeans: Gear Guide LeadBox™
What Stands Out: If you’re the kind of person to spend hours babying your beautiful bike, it doesn’t make sense to hop on it without a little attention to your own aesthetic. That’s what Maple Motorcycle Jeans is banking on with this ultra-stylish video squeeze page. A short video lays out the concept behind the lead magnet offered on the page: Oil, Sweat and Gear, a guide to gear that harmonizes with the form and function of Maple’s apparel. It’s such an effective advertisement, the LeadBox™ can stay fashionably minimalistic. A gray-scale color scheme and lots of white space make the book cover pop like the center line on smooth asphalt in the rain.
7. Ask Leo!: Timed Blog LeadBox™
What Stands Out: Blogger Leo Notenboom makes technology as easy as possible even for total newcomers, so it’s fitting that he’d make sure readers never have to hunt around to subscribe to his newsletter and get the free report that comes with it. He offers the chance to opt in to all visitors via this timed LeadBox™. A thick blue border and call-to-action button match the site’s color scheme, and both his messaging and his subscription bonus are keyed to his audience. It’s a common problem for the not-so-tech-savvy to find their computers bogged down by things they’ve accidentally downloaded but never uses, so Leo offers a list of 10 probable culprits. Information security can also be a big concern if you’re taking your first steps onto the internet, so Leo offers some extra reassurance with the words “Safe Subscribe” on his call-to-action button.
8. Joshua Kercher Bespoke: Timed Subscription LeadBox™
What Stands Out: Bespoke tailoring depends on the perfection of tiny details. Joshua Kercher carries that approach over into this simple timed LeadBox™, the double border of which exactly matches the doubled lines of the K in his logo. The vertical orientation ensures that this will resemble few other LeadBoxes® out there, and the copy promises more than standard mailing-list content: “style advice, company updates, great savings and incredible stories.” It’s an excellent way to capture site visitors who aren’t yet ready to respond to the page’s main call to action and book a fitting.
9. Daniela Uslan: Waitlist LeadBox™
What Stands Out: Often a call-to-action button is the brightest point on the page, but Daniela Uslan’s site is so packed with color that it might get lost or clash if she tried that approach. Instead, she makes her LeadBox™ trigger button stand out in black and cream. Daniela adds extra perceived value to a free offer by asking visitors to join a waitlist to start her Blog Makeover program. Inside the LeadBox™, she stays on brand by using a large header image of the beautiful watercolor graphic at the top of the page, from which she pulls a gorgeous deep purple tone for her submit button.
10. Sabina Knows: Course Launch LeadBox™
What Stands Out: When you’re offering training in any aspect of branding, it helps if you can demonstrate your thorough command of your own brand. On this landing page and matching LeadBox™, Sabina of Sabina Knows does that in spades. From the hot-pink photo background through the impeccable font and color choices to the bold copy, the page amply demonstrates that Sabina is someone worth learning from. The LeadBox™ adds an “XOXO, Sabina” to make the photo of Sabina even more personable and, naturally, surrounds everything in more hot pink. Inspired to make some powerful LeadBoxes® of your own? Before you go, don’t forget to download our mega-pack of LeadBox™ resources and put tons of design assets and strategic advice at your fingertips. Get it here:
