What happens when you leave your child alone with their math homework?
The result? They shut the book, and it’s playtime! You never know when they’ll get back to it—if at all.
In the world of email marketing, it’s the same story.
If you simply inform and delight your audience without guiding them, they’ll wander off without taking action. That’s where CTAs come in—leading your readers exactly where you want them to go.
But crafting the perfect CTA isn’t just about adding a button. It’s about following email CTA best practices that drive clicks and conversions.
In this blog, we’ll break down how CTAs work and how to create irresistible ones—saving you from endless trial and error!
How do email CTAs work?
Understanding what sparks your audience’s emotions is key to crafting effective email CTAs. By analyzing factors like their likes, dislikes, occupation, age, gender, demographics, buying patterns, and preferences, you can tap into emotional triggers that truly resonate.
These triggers subtly influence the audience’s subconscious, prompting them to reflect on their pain points and view your product or service as the solution.
And just as emails come in various forms—abandoned cart emails, sales emails, repeat purchase emails—their CTAs need to follow email CTA best practices to truly drive action.
Which brings us to the big question:
Why Following Email CTA Best Practices Matters?
Before answering the question, let us get to know about primary CTA and secondary CTA:
- Primary CTAs: This is your most important action, the one you want readers to take most. Make it prominent! Use whitespace, a styled button, and bold text to grab attention. Placing it early in the email is key, especially for mobile readers who might not scroll down.
- Secondary CTAs: These are additional actions you’d like readers to take, but they’re not as important as the primary CTA. Style them with less emphasis, perhaps a muted button or text link.
Now that we have understood these, let us focus on designing them:
Call to action placement
“It’s just a CTA” – Said no one ever!
Just as the right CTA is important, so is its placement. Placing your CTA in the right place can be a game-changer for your conversions.
As per your email layout, your CTAs must be placed in the most noticeable section. Ensure the placement of the rest of the elements so that your subscribers can’t miss it. Leaving sufficient white space around the CTA can make it easily recognizable amidst the email copy and other elements. However, you need to figure out what works for your brand depending on the email length, layout, copy, and the number of CTAs.
Why do I say that? Well, I can back that up with a claim! As reported by VWO, CTAs that are surrounded by less clutter and more white space are expected to get an increased conversion rate up to 232%. See? It’s not just a CTA after all!
Number of calls to action
It’s always better to not throw your CTA as confetti. If there are more CTAs than required, your brand can appear excessively persuasive, which can ruin the readers’ experience. Although there is no magic number, it’s important to balance it out just right. Hence, it can be safe to stick with at least 3 CTAs in an email.
Picking a unique color
Colors have the power to influence your mood and I’d say conversions too! Use eye-catching colors that align with the brand elements and those that evoke positive emotions. You can experiment with a brand-related color palette, color wheel, or contrasts that align with the brand tonality. While you pick the right color you must also consider the colors of the elements around it. A good way to do this is to pick colors that contrast with the background.
Some CTAs might be a bit difficult to read because of low color contrast or because of similar background and text colors. Believe it or not, colors convert too.
CTA copy
The words you use in your CTA can make or break your email copy. As with your email copy, with your CTA copy. Lead your CTA copy with purpose. In a nutshell, your audience must know what they are investing their time into, even though the outcome is not explicitly mentioned. The CTA copy must align with the email copy so that it doesn’t look abrupt.
Whereas, it must also stand out, so that it doesn’t look like a part of the email copy.
You can use imaginative writing or graphics to capture your readers’ interest. Images compel readers to take action faster than with endless paragraphs. Experiment with shapes, styles, and sizes. Likewise, it’s important to not overdo it with unnecessary elements and details. Taking this a notch ahead, you can use bulletproof buttons for your CTAs, instead of hyperlinked text. Why, you may ask? That’s because as per Campaign Monitor, button-based CTAs improved click-through rates by 127%.
Short
The shorter the better! Ideally, CTAs must have around 3-4 words. However, if it’s even shorter it can sound abrupt and can fail to deliver the message. Whereas if it’s long it can get lost in the email copy. Hence, in a nutshell, ensure brevity and clarity. Refrain from providing every detail in the CTA.
Compelling
Ideally, CTAs must evoke an emotional response, build a sense of urgency and appeal to the readers’ interest. It shouldn’t be lengthy, rather it should be targeted towards benefits. It must highlight why choosing your brand can benefit the reader. To craft perfect CTAs, consider what you are doing, what audiences must expect and what they’ll get from it.
Maintain relevance
It shouldn’t just be about what you do but also about why you do it. Lack of clarity might confuse the readers and can cause the click-through rates and conversions to drop. After all, who better than you to know your audience? Ensure relevancy in every step you take. From the colors, CTA button, copy, tonality and more. Besides keeping the language easily understandable, use a first-person perspective for better conversions.
Trying too hard to sell
Ever come across someone trying too hard to sell you something? That only leaves you with a negative impression and might even hurt the brand image as well. Moreover, it also brings desperation to the surface, leaving the audience feeling suspicious and causing a steady decline in trust.
Use action words
When you want them to take action, use action words! Some of the examples of action words include, buy, learn, download and more. These action words make the next actionable steps clear. By evoking emotions and enthusiasm, these words can trigger a response from the audience.
Action words can offer the final push to the audience for them to take action. You can begin with an action word or a verb that helps the users with the benefits of getting the product.
Mobile-friendly CTAs
We cannot emphasize the need for mobiles and you know why! While you use your mobile to do multiple tasks, reading your emails on your mobile is an activity most of us do when on the go. Ensure the CTAs in your email templates and newsletters are designed for the same. Likewise, GIFs can also quickly capture your audience’s interest and attention. Brand relatability for these GIFs will be a cherry on the cake.
Balance tone and voice
Should the tonality be cute, quirky, professional, or funny? Regardless of the tone you use, speak directly to your audience. The CTAs must feel like those are exclusively for your audience! As mentioned above, ensure that the tone and voice align with the content and the CTA. In simpler terms, the CTA should tell the same story with the same style.
Abruptly shifting gears to different writing styles and voices can create a disconnect, leading to a drop in click-through rates. Stick to the story you are telling rather than swaying in multiple directions.
A/B testing
Confused about which CTA could work well? You can conclude by creating 2 versions of emails with different CTAs and then using A/B testing on those. Since the testing is only for the CTAs, refrain from altering the email copy and the audience segment. This can help you test multiple iterations of your CTA and employ the one that works the best for your emails.
Engaging Call-to-Action (CTA) examples
Here are some compelling CTAs for various email marketing scenarios:
Sales and Promotions:
- “Shop Now”
- “Claim Your Discount”
- “Buy Now, Save Later”
- “Limited Time Offer”
Content and Lead Generation:
- “Download Our Free Guide”
- “Sign Up for Our Newsletter”
- “Watch the Webinar Now”
- “Read the Full Article”
Surveys and Feedback:
- “Take Our Survey”
- “Share Your Feedback”
- “Tell Us What You Think”
- “Leave a Review”
Community Building:
- “Join Our Community”
- “Follow Us on Social Media”
- “Share This with a Friend”
- “Attend Our Upcoming Event”
Why email CTA best practices are important for emails?
Provides the right direction to users
A strategically placed and logical CTA shows the readers the direction that they should take. This eliminates the need to clarify more with email content and other aspects. Simplifying the next step can also be helpful to increase conversions.
Enhances the click-through rates
Once you’ve struck a chord with your audience’s interest, it will lead to increased clicks and conversions. Now that’s what we call the magic of conversion-focused CTAs.
To turn prospects into consumers
CTAs usually break the readers’ reading pattern while reading long texts and remind them what to do next. This allows the CTA to stand out as the final command of what to do next.
Conclusion
Email CTA best practices depends on your content and goals. While CTAs are small, their impact is huge. And at times they aren’t so easy to embed. Follow the tips mentioned in the article to ensure your CTAs are effective. These tips can be considerered as well as note that these guidelines are subject to change depending on factors such as an industry.
And for any further assistance, there’s Icegram Express! Be it CTAs or automating personalized campaigns, reducing costs and much more, Icegram Express is a versatile work mate.