Despite how actively brands are embracing social media and messengers to stay connected with their audience, email marketing remains an important channel for engaging customers, boosting sales, and attracting new buyers. One of the key elements affecting the success of email campaign advertising is the call to action (CTA). A well-crafted CTA prompts recipients to take the desired action, whether that's making a purchase, registering for a webinar, or reading a blog post. Let's look at how CTAs work in email campaigns, what types exist, and what's worth keeping in mind to create calls to action that resonate with your audience and deliver tangible results.

What is a CTA?

A call to action in marketing is a key component of nearly any email campaign. In fact, the entire campaign is often built around getting this action performed. In email campaigns, a CTA is typically presented as a button with text or hyperlinked text that prompts readers to subscribe to a newsletter, make a purchase, visit a website, and so on. With such a call to action, a company can guide email recipients along a desired path that should lead to increased conversion: new purchases, newsletter sign-ups, and so on.

Why you need a call to action in email marketing

A call to action plays one of the leading roles in email marketing campaigns, giving recipients a recommendation for what to do after reading the email. Without a clearly formulated, compelling CTA, the effectiveness of email campaigns can drop significantly. A CTA helps increase conversion by helping customers move through the sales funnel. All of this increases the likelihood that recipients will take the desired actions and that the campaign will achieve its goals.

What types of CTA exist in email

In the world of email marketing, there are many different types of CTAs, each capable of driving specific actions from recipients of content and advertising. These different CTA types pursue their own unique goals and can be tailored to fit a brand's email campaign objectives.

Call to action button is a design element containing a short phrase urging action. Its placement within the email and on the screen is chosen to grab attention and prompt a response. A call-to-action button like this can be placed below the message text, on a banner, to the left or right of an image, or below an information block in social media advertising.

Hyperlink is an alternative CTA option you can add to the email text. It usually leads to relevant sections of the website or product and service pages.

Text CTA is another option that can appear as plain text without a link or button. However, getting and tracking results with this approach can be tricky.

Depending on the goals and audience type, calls to action can fall into the following categories based on their content:

  • Purchase prompt — aimed at a warm target audience that's ready to place an order. Example phrases: «Buy», «Shop now», «Get a discount», «Order».
  • Promise of details — used for an audience that's at the stage of needing more information about a product or service. Example phrases: «Learn more», «Read the article», «Explore the offer».
  • Contact collection — aimed at building a database of potential customers through engaging content and promotions. Example phrases: «Get a free consultation», «Subscribe to our newsletter», «Submit a request», «Ask a question».

How to create an effective call to action

Developing an effective CTA involves several important aspects.

Attractive design

First, make sure the form matches the content and won't offend your audience's sense of aesthetics. A visually appealing layout is, on its own, already motivating for engagement. Complementary colors and interesting design elements, images, and GIFs (optimized for email) will help you achieve this.

Action verbs

It's important to clearly and directly state what exactly the recipient needs to do. This works even on a subconscious level and helps boost conversion. Such verbs include: «Buy now», «Order», «Subscribe».

Appealing to emotions

Marketers have long used simple psychological tricks that influence a user's choices and a landing page's conversion. They're based on basic emotions people feel (or want to feel). These include greed or fear of missing out on a good deal, altruism and empathy, joy and laughter.

Clear rationale

It's important to show the reader why they should perform a particular target action. Ideally, this should be clear even when skimming the email — why the person should «buy», «order», «submit a request», «subscribe to updates», «call today», and so on. If the answer is obvious (to lose 10 kilograms, get rid of freckles, cure sinusitis, etc.), the campaign is highly likely to succeed.

A/B testing

Don't forget about the option to test different CTA variants. This lets you determine which ones are most effective for your audience and deliver the highest level of engagement. It helps you gather up-to-date information on audience interactions and optimize your marketing strategy to achieve better results in the future.

How to evaluate CTA effectiveness

Tracking campaign metrics lets you assess how well an email meets recipients' needs and interests. Key metrics worth monitoring include: open rate, number of clicks, and conversion rate. This data provides valuable insight into which calls to action work best and how they can be improved to achieve better results in future campaigns.

Regularly monitoring CTA effectiveness allows you to make informed decisions and continuously improve your marketing practices — adapting various strategies and achieving the greatest growth in engagement and conversion among recipients.

Wrapping up

A call to action is one of the main elements of digital email marketing. Much of the entire endeavor's success depends on it. A CTA encourages customers to engage, thereby increasing conversion and engagement. However, to be effective, it's important to use it correctly: choose the right wording, integrate it into the email appropriately, and regularly evaluate its effectiveness. This way, a company can continuously improve its marketing efforts and achieve better results. The key to success is ongoing testing, analysis, and optimization of the call to action, learning from mistakes, and keeping up with the latest trends in the relevant business niche.