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MAKE IT POP!: CTAs Get Some Action

Your call-to-action (CTA) tells your email recipients what you want them to do, and what they can expect from you when they do it. Subject lines get a lot of love, but once you get an open you need a click, so don’t forget to lavish some much-needed attention on your CTA.

FOUR GREAT WAYS TO MAKE YOUR CTA POP!:

1. Stay focused. Design the entire message to direct recipients towards the CTA. Don’t distract them with too many equally-weighted links and offers. Select imagery that draws the eye toward the point of conversion. Make the path appealing and clear, and make sure that it extends beyond the email itself to the landing experience.

Pottery Barn achieves serious CTA-focus with this summer sale message. The email is simple, text-based and entirely pointed toward sale shopping. The CTA whisks the recipient away to a coordinated landing page where a simple product grid offers customers the opportunity to dive into the shop category that interests them most.

2. Keep it direct and clear. It’s fun to write clever copy, but make sure that even the quirkiest wording is to the point. This Ann Taylor CTA, “Click and See,” feels pointedly enticing as does Piperlime’s “See for yourself”... I DO want to see!

This Anthropologie message is lovely, but lacks clarity. I’m not sure what the CTA is, or whether the message even has one. The sweater and all the buttons are beautiful...they make me want to do something, but I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do.

3. Make sure it’s above the fold. It doesn’t matter how adorable and endearing your email is—there will still be subscribers (many of them!) who will be too rushed to scroll down and get to the bottom of it. Keep the CTA above “the fold,” or in the part of the message that’s visible without any scrolling. While the fold location can be hard to predict with all the varying preview panes and computer monitors out there, put your CTA up top where it gets the attention it deserves.

I love this Giggle email, but the CTA is way down there. Keeping it above the fold doesn’t have to stifle creativity. This Banana Republic message has some fun with image layout while keeping what’s important up top.

4. Make it POP! Keeping it above the fold is a good start, but go further. Make your CTAs stand out visually. Try using HTML buttons as opposed to text links. You’ll grab more eyes that way and generate a higher CTR.

In this email, it almost seems like Free People is trying to hide their CTA. Why is it so tiny, tucked away in weeds? If it were right beneath the body copy, Free People would better serve their shoppers and increase sales without compromising their low-key approach.

While this Land of Nod CTA falls below the fold (gah!), the green button totally pops, and the very specific wording makes the destination absolutely clear. If you’re looking for copy inspiration in general, check out Land of Nod; they have tons of fun with CTAs and beyond.

For more on buttons, check out my article on “The Bulletproof Button”. Learn all about how to optimize your button design for maximum performance.

Which CTAs get you clicking? Please share your experiences with the eec community by posting a comment below.

As ever,
Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon

-->Read other Make it Pop! posts.

Posted on September 10, 2008 4:33 PM | Permalink

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Comments (2)

Nick Stamoulis:

Great article! Love that you've linked us to sites as examples to support your statements. Kudos!

Posted by Nick Stamoulis | September 10, 2008 11:00 PM

Posted on September 10, 2008 23:00

mark:

Great work,I am just getting into copywriting and this helps.

Posted by mark | January 15, 2009 8:43 AM

Posted on January 15, 2009 08:43

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The Email Experience Council's membership includes many of the brightest and most committed email marketing experts. We're pleased to have some of them share their insights here on these pages. Our blog contributors include:

Jordan Ayan is the chairman of Create-It!, a technology consulting organization, as well as the CEO of SubscriberMail, one of the leading email marketing companies. A two-time book author, a patent holder and a frequent speaker, Jordan has more than 20 years of experience in direct and database marketing. Read more.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media. Specializing in email and CRM strategy, he helps some of America’s top brands leverage online channels to communicate more effectively with their customers and prospects.

Lisa Harmon is a principal at Smith-Harmon, a creative services consultancy dedicated to email marketing strategy and production. She works with marketers to increase clickthrough, maximize revenue, and infuse delight into their email creative. Lisa is also the blogger behind edm.smith-harmon.com, an ongoing commentary on the best (and worst!) in email marketing creative. Read more.

Chip House is ExactTarget's VP of marketing services, leading the teams responsible for client success. He was named to BtoB Magazine’s 2005 “Who’s Who in B-To-B,” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email and an active lobbyist regarding spam and privacy issues. Read more.

Marco Marini is the CEO of ClickMail Marketing (CMM) and an acknowledged expert in e-marketing with over a decade and half's-worth of experience in the field. Before taking over as CEO, he was CMM's VP of Marketing & Operations. Marini has also held key marketing positions with CyberSource, eHealthInsurance, DoveBid and IBM Canada.

Stephanie Miller is VP of strategic services for Return Path, the leading email performance company. She works with marketers to earn a higher ROI and response from their acquisition and retention email programs—developing content, contact and segmentation strategies, along with testing, measurement and production programs. Read more.

Erick Mott is communications director at email service provider Lyris. He has 20 years of experience from enterprise, SMB, agency and start-up marketing, communications and innovation roles at companies including Habeas, Nokia, MarkMonitor, GlobalFluency, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Philips Electronics and two of his own start-ups. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the Email Experience Council's founder and the global EVP and CMO of global online publishing company Zinio. She is a thought leader and visionary in the email and digital marketing field. A columnist for ClickZ, she has published numerous papers and is a frequent speaker. Read more.

Kevin Senne is the Strategic Deliverability Director for Premiere Global Services. Kevin has been heavily involved in all facets of email marketing for more than a decade and he previously managed Email Operations for Travelocity.com. Kevin specializes in deliverability, strategy, and social media integratio and he focuses on helping marketers become permission-based one-to-one marketers. Read more.

Charles Stiles is the VP of worldwide business development at Goodmail Systems. In his role, Charles is focused on helping generate a better understanding of the email environment and potential solutions for a better consumer experience. He currently serves as the chairman for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group. Read more.

Jeremy Swift is director of client relations for email service provider BlueHornet. He helped form BlueHornet’s founding team in 2000 and has been responsible for client services and marketing strategy since the company’s inception. Jeremy is known for his ability to articulate technical information in ways that clearly resonate with today’s online marketer.

Kara Trivunovic currently serves as the senior director of strategic services for StrongMail Systems, where she is responsible for helping marketers optimize their email marketing programs for greater returns. Most recently Kara was founder and principal of The Email Advisor, a respected email marketing consultancy. Prior to launching The Email Advisor, Kara led strategic services for the email division of Premiere Global Services. Kara brings a unique perspective to the space having worked on the client, agency and provider side for 10 years.

Chris Wheeleris the director of deliverability at Bronto Software. He is leading the charge for ensuring both Bronto's customers and staff are well informed about email marketing practices and technology as well as being the face of Bronto deliverability externally. Previously, Chris created the internal deliverability program at Amazon.com alongside program managing the operations of the email team and was at an ESP leading a team of deliverability consultants. Besides being a frequent contributor on Deliverability.com, Chris is a part of many email industry forums, both business and technical. Read more.

Chad White is the research director at Smith-Harmon, an email marketing strategy and creative services agency. He is the founder of the Retail Email Blog, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing practices of the largest online retailers. Chad regularly writes major research reports on email marketing and is an Email Insider columnist for MediaPost. Read more.