Capture Emails With Pre-Launch Landing Pages: Examples & Recommended Tools

If you're preparing for an upcoming product launch, there's nothing more valuable than building a pre-launch mailing list. No matter what industry you operate in, having a comprehensive pre-launch strategy designed to build hype and grow your list is a must if you want to get the ball before launch.

At the pre-launch phase, be prepared to: spread awareness, build hype, grow your following and most importantly - collect a list of emails from potential customers.

So how do you collect emails? One of the best ways is by building a dedicated landing page for potential customers to leave their email with you. This simple landing page will contain information about your pre-launch, as well as a field for visitors to enter their email and submit their interest.

In this post, we'll take a look at examples of great landing pages and show you how you can make your own landing page to get visitors excited to sign up for your upcoming product or service.

A pre-launch landing page is a concise one-pager on your website that offers an overview of what your product is all about through the use of compelling images, videos and copy.

The best images and videos to use are actual previews of what your product looks like. If you have a working prototype, don't be shy to show off actual footage of your product.

As for the copy, try to highlight your unique value proposition in the simplest way possible. You could include a message on why you're building your product, what value it offers, and what it means to your target audience.

Finally, there should be a call-to-action for visitors to submit their interest. Typically, visitors will leave their email with you and sign up to your mailing list. You will then contact subscribers whenever there are product updates or when you're ready to launch. This is the best way to start accruing potential customers from the very beginning.

The call-to-action is the most important element on your landing page, so make sure it stands out from the rest of the page. Visually, this could mean using a unique and bright colour for your call-to-action button.

Furthermore, your call-to-action should be easy and desirable to perform. The best thing you can do is refrain from asking for too much information. That's why you should keep your call-to-action form to a minimal - just a simple email address would do.

When you launch your product you want to be launching to an excited audience who are ready to use your product, make a purchase, and spread the word to their own social circles. The best way to do this is by using all of your marketing channels to drive traffic to your pre-launch landing page that shows off your product, demonstrates it's value, builds hype and encourages sign-ups.

This will help you develop an engaged and excited audience who are primed to take action the moment you go live and give your launch its best chance of success.

Think of your landing page as the last step in your pre-launch marketing funnel. You should be raising awareness and building engagement through a variety of channels, but your landing page is where it all comes together. It's where you showcase everything you've got to offer, finds your early adopters, and drives all-important sign-ups.

As important as it is to get your landing page up and running, you don't want users to visit and take a keen interest in your product only to walk away and forget about you because your product is yet to launch. This is why it's crucial to include a call-to-action on your landing page that encourages users to sign up to keep up to date with all your latest announcements and be at the front of the line when you launch.

The prospect of being at the front of the line when you launch paired with the excitement your landing page builds will be appealing enough to drive some instant sales as soon as you go live.

No matter what industry you are in, acquiring a list of people who are interested in your product is essential before you launch to the masses. After all, no one wants to launch to crickets. And with so much noise in the E-commerce world, you'll be grateful to have a mailing list to directly communicate with.

Building a mailing list won't only help you ace your launch, it will also help you build loyalty, make announcements and drive sales well into the future. Plus, seeing people sign up before your product has even been released is a great way to validate your concept, determine how in-demand your product is and bolster your own sense of security.

Ever think about the apps or services you use today and how they ended up in your life? You'll be surprised that most of them started out with a humble pre-launch page too.

So we know plenty of businesses have deployed their own pre-launch landing pages and leveraged it to secure a successful launch. But what exactly makes a great pre-launch landing page?

First of all, they cover the same key elements:

• What is your product?
• What problem does it solve?
• What are the benefits?
• A 'hook' or reason for signing up (i.e. pre-order discount, VIP access, exclusive freebies, etc)

In the upcoming section, you'll notice that all the examples listed have exhibited those key elements. Additionally, they also leverage on certain elements or tactis to further boost the effectiveness of their landing page.

Canva created a scarcity effect by having visitors reserve their unique username at the pre-launch phase. For netizens who love having the same username across all their accounts on the web, this is a big deal.

People love to stake their claim before others, and Canva knows this. Introducing themselves as the upcoming gold standard in collaborative design platforms, Canva convinces users that they will be 'the next big thing', so users should hurry up and secure their usernames before it's gone.

By displaying the visitor's username after canva.com/, Canva also provides a bolstered sense of ownership, which can easily pivot the visitor into reserving their account.

Harry's pre-launch viral landing page is the holy grail when it comes to creating a viral effect. Through their powerful referral program, Harry's managed to accrue nearly 100k subscribers within the first week of pre-launch.

All the user has to do is invite a minimum of 5 friends to score shaving products from Harry's upcoming product line.

On their landing page, Harry's implemented a progress bar to show users how many friends they have to invite in order to earn a certain freebie. More importantly, the progress bar shows off Harry's upcoming product line, which means people can immediately get an idea of what kind of brand Harry's is and what they sell.

Gyroscope specializes in using data from digital products that you already use to create beautiful dashboards that visualize your life at a glance. They convey this with a simple headline that is intriguing to the user - who doesn't want to look at a personal website featuring their lives?

Since Gyroscope's unique value proposition is in automation (you don't need to input data manually to generate your unique dashboard), they walk the talk even in the pre-launch phase.

What do we mean by that? If you have noticed, the 'Get Early Access' button features the Facebook logo, meaning the signup process is already automated if you have a Facebook account 😉

Pre-launch landing pages are not limited to businesses that haven't launched. Established business such as Stripe have also used pre-launch pages for capturing emails from anyone outside their serviceable markets.

A 'coming soon' landing page like this one can reduce the risk of losing new customers outside of your serviceable market to potential competitors. Just imagine: anyone interested in Stripe could immediately sign up for their services once it becomes available. Competitors don't even get a chance because Stripe has already 'staked their claim' by building their mailing list.

Another benefit of using this landing page is to gauge interest of audiences across different countries. The data collected on these pages could help Stripe determine if they should expand their operations.

Just like Stripe, Robinhood uses a 'coming soon' page to keep potential customers up to date whenever they are ready to launch in a specific country.

On their landing page, Robinhood also leveraged on their customer development efforts in matured markets to develop a powerful narrative that will resonate with new customers - they highlight the user pain point and how they can help solve it (avoid paying commissions whenever you make a trade).

Marie Forleo's B-School uses bold flashing colours and sliding decks in their landing page. To intrigue visitors and create scarcity, they announce that the program is currently 'sold out' and will be back soon for a new cohort.

The tone in their copy is warm and inviting. Visitors can subscribe and receive relevant content from B-School until the program re-opens. This helps B-School buy time and to keep subscriber's interest at an optimum rate. It's also a great foot in the door technique that will allow you to market to an audience before you even showcase your product.

That means that by the time the program re-opens, subscribers will already be primed to sign up!

On x.ai's launch page, there are only three major elements:

• Headline
• Preview of the app
• Sign up form

Since x.ai doesn't have a user interface (it works within email), a picture of an email app on an iPhone is used to showcase x.ai's scheduling capabilities.

At the time, using AI to schedule meetings was unheard of. To reduce cognitive load, x.ai described their product by anchoring it to a familiar phenomena to their target audience.

They did this by describing their AI scheduling experience as akin to having a 'personal assistant' who can schedule meetings for you. This appeals to intrigued subscribers who want to feel good about having a 'personal assistant'.

During their early access phase, Notion had a very comprehensive landing page that described all of their features in great detail. They went as far as using video footage to showcase how beautiful their product was, and how much it differentiated from everyone else in the note-taking industry.

At the pre-launch phase, it's essential to showcase whatever social proof you may accrue. This could have a compounding effect on building credibility.

Notion knows this, so they included testimonials from notable early adopters which would then earn them the confidence of even more early adopters.

And since the early access version of Notion is free, they were able to gather a ton of users at an early stage and slowly convert them into paying subscribers later.

There are a number of solutions out there that could help you build landing pages with little to no coding knowledge. Most startups with developers & designers may opt to roll out their own, but for the rest of us here are some viable alternatives:

Instapage is a free landing page builder with lots of pre-designed landing page templates, A/B testing, and drag & drop elements that allow you to get a launch page up in minutes.

Lattice created this launch page using Instapage and used it to create some buzz about their product and generate pre-launch signups.

Leadpages is a landing page builder offering hundreds of customisable templates and an array of lead generation and opt-in tools such as A/B testing, instant ad creation, outstanding analytics and a host of marketing tool integrations.

Take a look at how Soulful MBA used a Leadpages landing page to drive signups for their upcoming online course.

Unbounce has oodles of landing page templates to use, they also allow you to split test between designs & elements to find the optimal design for your launch page.

Have a look at this launch page Vimeo built with Unbounce to announce and promote their new product - Vimeo 360.

ClickFunnels offers a wide selection of funnel templates and an easy to use drag and drop webpage editor to help you build powerful funnels and grow your business by generating leads, signups and sales.

With ClickFunnels you can create comprehensive funnels that will guide customers through signups, purchases and retention.

If you're launching on Product Hunt then checking out Ship is a must.

Ship by Product Hunt is a swiss army knife for makers that are focused on shipping their product. It allows you to build landing pages which you can use to collect and send emails, conduct surveys, engage in instant messaging and more.

Just a few clicks away from a simple landing page, Ship simplifies the pre-launch phase for makers who want to connect with early adopters and be transparent with their process as much as possible.

Ship also provides you access to the hyper-engaged Product Hunt community via their Upcoming page, meaning tech enthusiasts and influencers are just clicks away from discovering your product.

Learn How to Launch On Product Hunt

Find out how you can use a Product Hunt launch to boost exposure and start generating leads.

Throughout your pre-launch journey, you may need to update your followers or subscribers on product updates, notifications, or sales promotions. This is when a tool like Gleam Capture can come in handy to notify visitors or subscribers alike.

Capture can reduce the friction of coding your own opt-in forms. Our extensive customisation tools allow you to format text, add images as well as use custom CSS to style the perfect announcement banner.

You also save the hassle of exporting/importing your list to an email marketing platform while collecting emails.

Finally, you can easily install Capture forms on your website with one line of code. The forms can also be scheduled using behavioural rules so your campaigns reach visitors in a timely manner.

Let's look at a few scenarios where Capture could come in handy:

Offering discounts during pre-order can help drive more sales and encourage visitors to become early adopters. Since it's a brand new product, offering a discount to lower barriers could encourage more people to make a purchase and try out your product or service.

So if you're running a pre-order campaign, you should definitely take advantage of the opportunity and incentivise sign ups. While you're announcing your pre-order sale in the Popup banner, just ask visitors to sign up to your mailing list before offering the discount via email.

If you're running a flash sale or if your early access stage is coming close to an end, you can encourage users to take action immediately by using a countdown timer in your announcement.

Our Countdown template can do that for you easily, just enter your end date and we'll start counting down for you.

If you're running a crowdfunding campaign then chances are you'll be updating your backers a lot over the duration of your pre-launch. Once you reach specific milestones, you might want to celebrate major wins and achievements with your community of backers.

Our Takeover template will help you create massive announcements over your landing page to make sure no one misses out on the good news.

If you'd like to engage with your community of early adopters, then there is no better way than by running a giveaway. Giveaway promotions can be the perfect opportunity for you to close in on early adopters by having them perform actions that are beneficial to your pre-launch.

Furthermore, you'll have the opportunity to get to know your users better by having them answer questions, complete surveys, or offer feedback. Whatever actions you decide to implement, giveaways are definitely a great conversation opener between your product and potential customers.

We'll talk more extensively about running giveaways during your pre-launch in the next section, but for now you just need to know that you can use Capture to announce giveaways on your website and redirect visitors to the campaign.

Collect More Emails With Gleam Capture

Check out our helpful documentation for step by step instructions on setting up your own Capture or get started right away!

If you want to capture more emails during pre-launch, then you should really consider running a giveaway promotion. Giveaways are a great promotional tool for drawing attention to your new product or service. It creates an opportunity for you to to engage with potential customers and maybe even drive pre-sales.

Using Gleam Competitions, setting up giveaways have never been easier. We offer plenty of options when it comes to driving the actions that matters most to your business.

Some of the actions include: newsletter subscriptions, social media follows, content creation, social referrals, promotional material exposure and much, much more. For a business in it's pre-launch phase, all these actions are extremely powerful in gaining traction.

Take a look at our pre-launch giveaway template to see what your campaign could look like:

To give you an example, here's our customer Eco Meal Prep and their pre-launch campaign for their upcoming product:

Besides setting up a launch page to grow their mailing list, Eco Meal Prep also created a giveaway using Gleam Competitions to drive social actions. Have a look at the actions they drove using our Competitions widget:

As a supplement to their landing page, Eco Meal Prep hosted a giveaway campaign that was going to build more than a mailing list. Besides driving traffic to their social media channels, they were using the giveaway campaign to collect feedback from potential customers:

Additionally, Eco Meal Prep also utilised our powerful Viral Share action to get participants to share their product with friends and family. This is a big win for any sort of business in their pre-launch phase to get the word out about their upcoming product, as well as reach an extended audience with the same interest.

Learn How to Pre-Launch Your Business With Gleam

Find out how you can use Gleam to run a pre-launch campaign which will build awareness and drive action before your official launch.

Setting up a giveaway campaign for your upcoming product or service is incredibly easy. All you have to do is pick the actions you'd like to drive, then embed one of our widgets on your landing page.

To make your giveaway easy to enter, you should set a short and concise URL on your website that points to the contest.

For example, prelaunch.website.com or, website.com/contest.

If you prefer, you can also install a popup Competition, which makes it the first thing your visitor will see on your landing page:

Ready To Run Your Own Giveaway?

Check out our documentation on setting up your own giveaway or get started right away!

If you don't have a pre-launch website or landing page just yet, don't fret. We've got your back. We offer unique hosted landing pages for each giveaway campaign that runs on Gleam Competitions.

Usually, a hosted campaign would have a URL like this:

https://gleam.io/AVn1Q/leap-motion-example-giveaway

That means we host your campaign on our website and it's free for you to distribute to your audience. If you already have a budding mailing list, then feel free to send your users a link to our hosted landing page and have them enter from there.

Learn More About Hosted Landing Pages

Find out everything you need to know about our stylish, customisable hosted landing pages.

In this post, we've talked about why you need a launch page + mailing list, the key elements of a good launch page, great examples of launch pages from other brands as well as powerful tools that will help you excel your own pre-launch campaign.

Hopefully you've also learned the tricks of driving more emails and actions that are essential for your business. With that said, it's time for you to go out there and launch your own business 😎