An effective email message is one where the call to action is clear, concise and visible to anyone reading the message in any format. This article outlines eight ways to make your call to action (CTA) heard loud and clear.

“Click here!”

Many email marketers believe that is the ultimate call to action: It’s clear, concise, universally understood and specific in telling the email reader what to do. Just what you want, right?

Alas, it’s wrong.

As a command, “click here” is beautiful in its simplicity, but it falls far short as a call to action – the trigger to launch the customer on the complicated path to conversion – because it doesn’t tell your email readers what you really want them to do.

Nor does it answer that universal question all readers have that drives so many actions: “What’s in it for me?”

If your email marketing program still is not delivering the results you need to see, even after you conquer the physical challenges of deliverability and list-building, the problem may lie instead in your call to action, particularly if you rely on “click here.”

In an email message, the call to action has three elements: the action you want the reader to take, the words you use to issue the call, and its physical appearance (text, image, location)

Here are eight strategies to help you cover all your bases:

1. Separate the Click from the Call

In the standard email message, you don’t have a lot of space to tell customers why they should click a link. So, the call to action – or CTA, the phrase that will compel the reader to click the link and start down the conversion path – must deliver as much information as possible in just a few words.

That’s where “click here” fails to deliver.

I can understand how “click here” got promoted from simple command to lofty CTA. The click is something we all understand. It’s easy for the reader to visualize the physical action you want them to take, because it’s simpler than saying “Please click your mouse button on this link so that you will jump from this email to the specially designed landing page we have created for you at our Web site.”

The click also is the basic unit for measuring the click-through rate, a common measure of success for an email campaign. However, this “one size fits all” command doesn’t serve the needs of the call to action, which requires a custom fit varying with the sender, the recipient and the ultimate result.

For a retailer, the email message tells the customer, “Buy now!” However, the buying process doesn’t necessarily start when the reader clicks through to the Web site.

Instead, the link you provide takes the customer to a product page for more information: product descriptions, pricing, image shots, discount
amount, and the like.

So, the email message isn’t necessarily asking the customer to commit to a purchase but merely to learn more about the product. If the customer isn’t ready to seal the deal right from the email message, “click here” might appear to demand a greater commitment than he or she is willing to make. “Learn more” might actually more closely reflect what’s going on in the customer’s head.

An email publisher has a different end result in mind. Newsletters usually contain article abstracts or introductory paragraphs. The action, then, becomes “Read the full story.” Again, “click here” inadequately expresses the action you want readers to take.

Be realistic and clear about what actions you want your email message to inspire. This will help direct you to design an effective call to action.

2. Express the CTA Clearly

Once you know the action your email message should inspire, you must design the call so that it tells the reader what to do and what to expect for doing it.

As with so much else in marketing, a CTA often explains the benefit the reader will get, answering the “what’s in it for me?” question, and should be expressed as an action. Again, this varies with the email’s type and purpose.

Marketers whose email message generates a product or service purchase should match the CTA to the landing page where the email link will send clickers. If it’s a page of images showing different varieties of the same product, the call could invite the reader this way: “See all 20 colors here.” Or, if you simply must include the word “click:” “Click to see all 20 vibrant colors.”

Informational messages – newsletters, bulletins, updates – direct the reader to get the full story at the Web site. Again, you need to tell the reader not only what to do but what he can expect by doing it. “Learn more techniques to increase click-through rates” is both information and action-oriented, where “click here” falls flat.

One other shortcoming with using “click here” as your main CTA: It’s repetitive and boring! Vary the wording to reflect where in the sales cycle your customers probably are, what you’re saying in the body copy that leads up to or surrounds the CTA … Just don’t repeat it more than once in one message.

3. Sprinkle Links Generously

Obviously, the CTA must be a clickable link. But that cannot be your reader’s only path to the landing page. Readers will click on domains, product names, etc, within the body copy just as they'll click on the CTA at the end of the copy. Giving readers more options will increase your total CTR.

Examples:

Newsletter readers often click on an article headline as well as the call-to-action link. Make headlines informative and action-oriented, so that they can perform this double duty.

The same is true for commercial emails. The product or service name and images should link directly to the landing page. Never strand a shopper on your home page or a general information site.

4. Use Text to Make CTAs Pop

Besides linking the product or service name to your landing page, you should also boldface it to help it catch the eye, especially if you rely on text more than images to tell your story. Boldface makes scanning much easier.

You can also boldface action words, key phrases and anything else that can drive the reader’s eye down to the official call to action. (These can be but don’t necessarily have to be hyperlinked.)

Most importantly, though: Boldface the CTA. (See how that got your attention in this paragraph?)

I often see copy that sprinkles boldface type too liberally through a message, only to camouflage the CTA in plain text and make it look like the least-important part of the copy. CTAs need to stand out, not blend in:

• Increase the font size of the CTA - don't shrink it. Make it prominent and obvious.
• Use white space to offset or highlight the CTA. If the action at the end of an article abstract is to read the full story, don't just run the last sentence into the CTA. Use a hard return, indent and make it easy to see exactly where the CTA is.

5. Location, Location, Location

The most obvious place to drop a CTA is at the end of the copy. But readers jump around when they read. That’s another reason to boost the number of links to your landing page. But also drop the CTA higher up in the body copy, where appropriate.

Threes Ways to Use Images Better:

I often see three huge errors in image-based CTAs:

1. The missing link: Readers click on logos, product shots and brand names, but often you see them not hyperlinked. If nothing happens when they click, they’ll assume the email is broken, delete it and be done with it and you.
2. Image-blocking: It’s a big problem, and one that’s going to get worse as more email programs block images by default as a way to protect users against spam and viruses. If your CTA is enclosed in an image, and if the image is not displayed, neither is your CTA. This is a no-brainer, yet I see it happening all the time.
3. Image maps: Image maps highlight a small region that restricts where the user can click. I see the "click here" text in offer-
   related images mapped so that only those words will drive the action, and not the full image. If you restrict where users can click, you make it more difficult for them to respond to your offer. That will depress your CTR. Use text links for navigation and to get around preview pane and image blocking limits. Make the entire image clickable, and include supporting text under the image and in the “alt” tag the reader can click if the image is disabled.

In a Nutshell:

Adding more CTAs, and using CTAs that are more clear and obvious, will make your email messages more effective in driving conversions - no matter what that conversion might be.

Make it easy for the recipient to understand not just where but why to click through, and what they can expect on the other side, and you'll see your CTR increase.

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