The Landing Page That Won Our Hearts (And Won Its Creator a Trip to CTA Conf)

A couple weeks ago we announced a contest on our blog. It wasn’t the type of contest where the winner just gets an iPad. Nope, not here.

The winner would be sent to Unbounce’s Call To Action Conference in Vancouver this September 13th – 15th. The grand prize was a trip to Vancouver: including the flight, hotel and two conference tickets. The whole shebang!

cta-conf-contest-featured-650

The challenge was simple. Build a landing page in Unbounce (for free) that answers one question:

Why should we send you to the Call to Action Conference?

We were blown away by the amount of thought, creativity, effort, love and landing page expertise that went into these pages. Unbounce’s Senior Conversion Optimizer Michael Aagaard spoke for all the judges when he said, “Wow – it’s difficult to pick a winner!”

Indeed, it was. But the tribe has spoken.

In this post we’ll recognize the winners, their pages, their chops — along with some insights from the judges. We hope you’ll be as inspired as we were.

Gold Medal Winner – Andrea Getman

Andrea - Gold
Click on the image to see Andrea’s landing page in all its glory.

Mission possible! Andrea’s spy-themed landing page has it all.

On top of an action movie trailer that grabs your attention right off the bat, Andrea’s page has a strong headline, clever call to action and strong testimonials to really seal the deal.

Here’s what Kyrie Melnyck, Event Marketing Coordinator at Unbounce, had to say about the page:

We’re putting a ton of effort into this year’s Call to Action Conference, but Andrea looks like she’s putting even more effort into attending! Loved her page, video, testimonials and retargeting (she Facebook stalked me for days…).

What’s Kyrie referring to?

In a stroke of marketing genius, Andrea ran a delightful retargeting campaign that hit up almost everyone who works at Unbounce:

Andrea - Retargeting

Tia Kelly, Customer Success Manager at Unbounce, also thought this idea was neat:

Knowing how much work goes into launching even a simple marketing campaign, I can appreciate the effort Andrea put into her submission. She managed to stay clear about her goal while mixing in some personality. Driving paid social to the landing page was a nice little touch!

There’s more, too. As a landing page optimization veteran, Andrea also conducted an A/B test to see if more explicit directional cues would result in a conversion lift.

Andrea Directional Cues 2
See that little arrow pointing to the CTA button? That’s a directional cue if we ever saw one.

The result?

The variant with the directional cues resulted in a 5.2% conversion lift over her original page without them. Boss.

Congrats Andrea, you’re coming to the Call To Action Conference!

Silver Medal Winner – Syed Raza

Syed - Landing page
Click on the image to see Syed’s landing page and watch his rendition of “People Say I Eat Too Many Chocolate Bars.”

At first glance, Syed’s page had a clean visual aesthetic – but it was his video parody of “People Say I Eat Too Many Chocolate Bars” that really got us. Cody Campbell, Unbounce’s SEO Manager, couldn’t get enough:

Do you remember that acne commercial? I used to imitate it all the time. His video was perfect.

The judges also loved how he used an attention-grabbing picture of himself as a directional cue that focuses the eye on the call to action button.

In the words of Stephanie Saretsky, Multimedia Content Producer at Unbounce:

Syed’s landing page is pure humor. With little images of himself pointing to every call to action, he makes himself the directional cue and makes the CTA hard to avoid.

Syed was another clever contest who retargeted us on Facebook – but he took things a step further by including additional incentive to fill out the lead gen form.

Further down the page prompted people to submit their name and email to receive “The Top 10 Reasons Why Syed Should Be At CTA 2015.”

The email you received after filling out the form was quite simply hilarious:

Syed Email

But it wasn’t all just fun and games – his landing page did its job by converting at a healthy 16.96%. Congrats Syed!

Bronze Medal Winner – Thomas Lerch

Thomas Landing Page
Click on the image to see Thomas’ landing page and watch a true conversion hero.

In a Reddit thread, Thomas said his took almost 50 hours of work. If you watch his hilarious video, you’ll understand why. His video goes over everything he’ll do to make sure the conference is amazing for attendees. As judge Talia Wolf, CEO of Conversioner and CTA Conf speaker put it:

I really like the way Thomas directed his pitch to you. He really kept people engaged and answered the question: what’s in it for Unbounce to have him at the conference versus why it’s good for him. #winner!

But Thomas did a ton to show off his landing page optimization chops, too. As Dan Levy, Content Strategist at Unbounce, pointed out:

Thomas employs a bunch of neat persuasion tactics like urgency/scarcity, social proof and directional cues. It’s clear that Thomas knows his conversion stuff and would add as much to CTA Conf as he’ll get out of it.

Indeed, Dan. We can’t wait to meet you, Thomas!

Honourable mentions

Part of the reason choosing a winner was so difficult was that we had so many awesome submissions. We would be remiss to not highlight some of the other beautiful landing pages and creative ideas.

Tim Ruof

Tim Landing Page
Click the image to see Tim’s entire landing page.

Tim’s call to action went right to Google flights, searching Buffalo to Vancouver. Very clever.

Bethany Bauer

Bethany Landing Page
Check out Bethany’s landing page and you’ll want to go to CTA Conf too.

Bethany, last year’s landing page champion, is already going to this years conference, but she submitted a landing page just for fun? #amazing. As Bethany explained in her submission,  “I wasn’t really trying to win. I just wanted to make something for you since I enjoyed last year’s conference so much.”

Ben Nesvig

Ben Landing Page
Click the image and check out Ben’s landing page in full.

Knowing that not everyone will watch a landing page video, Ben put his video splash image to work – look at the way he points to the call to action button above. #directionalcues

Allison Otting

allison-otting-lp
Click the image to check out Allison’s awesome landing page.

The real star of Allison’s landing page is the awesome copywriting. From her headlines and subheads to her call to action button, her page had us all nodding our heads “yes!”

Clay Coomer

clay-coomer-full
Click the image to see Clay’s landing page in full.

Clay’s landing page included a ton of personality, memes and dancing. And his kids are so cute! We especially loved the “data doesn’t lie” section.

Meagan Smith

meagan-smith-full
Click the image to see Meagan’s landing page.

Meagan’s landing page is hilarious and full of personality! If you choose to accept the mission she puts forth, you’ll see what we mean.

Ian Chapman

ian-chapman-full
Click the image to see Ian’s landing page in its full glory.

Ian’s landing page is well-rounded and persuasive, and if you skip down to his “About me” section, you’ll see a pretty adorable testimonial from his wife. Priceless.

Ian Testimonial

See you at the Call to Action Conference!

Cheers to a seriously badass group of landing page builders – we were blown away by your expertise and creativity.

And congrats to our top three winners: Andrea, Syed and Thomas. We can’t wait to spoil y’all with knowledge, food, beer, adventure and Unbounce hugs. Congratulations!

We hope to see you all at the Call to Action Conference from September 13th – 15th.

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About Stefanie Grieser
As the 9th employee at Unbounce, Stefanie Grieser has gone from scrappy startup marketer to passionate, scale-up leader, heading up international markets, partnerships and events. She was named top 100 female marketers to follow and loves turning a good idea into an impactful, memorable experience. Find her on Twitter @smgrieser.
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