As I mentioned Monday, the weekly themes are going wondefully well, but there are still a bunch of innovative bits of marketing that have popped up between the cracks and need a closer look.

Today, I want to share something from Revelstoke that caught my eye.

The Big Squeeze
In my pre-SlopeFillers life, much of my marketing lived and died by the squeeze page. And by squeeze page I mean a page on your website that serves one purpose and one purpose only: to build your email list.

Each off season a retail site I marketed didn’t sell a thing. Instead, the landing page was turned into a squeeze page that converted more than 20% of visitors into email leads.

My formula had worked so well so many times, I could predict within a thousand dollars how much revenue that list would generate come winter.

The Change
I think we all know social media can do things, but as I’ve said many times before, it’s not that great at driving direct sales. Awareness? Yes. Brand building? Yes. Spreading content? Yes. But putting the rubber to the road and driving revenue? Not as much. Especially not when compared with email.

Wired recently wrote an article stating as much and social media folks finally are starting to concede the point that email is about as good a combination you can get of an “owned” channel that drives revenue.

So, maybe it shouldn’t have been a big surprise that I saw a really well designed squeeze page pop up a few weeks back.

Revelstoke Stokes List Growth
Revelstoke were the marketers behind the campaign. Take a look.

Notice a few things.

• There was one action: enter to win with an email address
• The copy was short, direct, but clear about the value exchanged for the email opt-in
• All the copy drove the visitor to that point
• It wasn’t just a typical page template, it was custom designed for this promo
• They used an email template that was equally concise and custom for the campaign

Those are the makings of a good squeeze page: concise, custom, and (hopefully) optimized and tested throughout to get the page the converts the best.

The Year?
Coincidentally, I think Facebook promotion tabs have paved the way for squeeze pages that live on the resort’s domain to make a rebound. Pages that are focused and drive rapid list creation.

This year, I don’t think we’ll see all resorts using this approach, but we’ll see more. Especially in proportion to social tabs and contests. Either way, great work Revelstoke. Love the direction.

PS – in the spirit of being thorough, here are the screen shots of the emails and pages I saw after opting in.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.