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The Daily Carnage

may 16, 2023

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…is the worst email CTA ever.

6 Tips for Better Email CTAs

Email CTAs have the tough task of motivating users who didn’t search for you (and aren’t necessarily ready to buy) to take a desired action. Here are 6 tips to write more clickable copy:

  1. Make them want more. To persuade a casual reader into action, tell them what will happen when they click and why they should. To drive users to a whitepaper, for example, consider “streamline your operations” instead of “download” or “learn more.”
  2. Use multiple CTAs. There’s no rule against using multiple CTAs in one email. Use an action-directed CTA and a benefit-focused CTA in the same message.
  3. Surround your CTA with supporting statements. Your copy could ask a question, and your CTA could answer it.
  4. Break the rules. CTAs are supposed to complete the sentence “I want…,” and traditionally they include a verb. But no copywriting rules are absolute. Experiment to find what works best and feels most natural with your audience.
  5. Be careful what you ask for. Email subscribers at the top of the purchase funnel may be put off by “buy now” or another big CTA. Opt for anticipatory language like “discover” to invite action and offer a benefit.
  6. Talk to a person, not an audience. Your CTA should feel like an invitation from one individual to another, not a command from an institution to an audience. If you handed someone a book, you’d say “Check it out,” not “learn more.”

Click on over to MarTech for more examples for gold-standard CTA examples.

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