A call-to-action (CTA) in digital marketing is a piece of content designed to prompt an immediate response to the viewer, reader, or listener. Usually, CTAs are a string of words that influence people to do something.
The action you want people to take could be anything: download an ebook, sign up for a webinar, get a coupon, attend an event, etc.
A CTA can be placed anywhere in your marketing — on your website, in an ebook, in an email, or even at the end of a blog post.
The most common call-to-action known to marketers is “click me.” It’s also one of the most ineffective ones because it doesn’t give the reader any context nor reason to perform the action, i.e. do the click.
In this post, I’ll be sharing some tips for writing effective calls-to-action.
8 Tips for Writing Effective Call-to-Action
1. Start with a strong action verb
Use a strong action verb that resonates with the viewer. This makes it easy to understand what you want them to do.
Look at the examples I listed above. They start with action verbs that clearly tells the viewer what to do.
2. Use words that provoke emotion or enthusiasm
Using emotions is something marketers often use, and rightfully so. Emotions are what gets us to decide and move forward.
For example, the simple use of an exclamation point (!) depicts enthusiasm.
3. Include a reason why they should click
This should be obvious to you but it’s worth mentioning it.
Your CTA must have a reason for people to click on it. Like I said above, click me definitely misses the mark.
Another CTA used a lot especially in forms is submit. Again, there’s no reason for them to do so.
A good CTA following this tip could be join our mailing list and receive a coupon for 20% off your next purchase.
Think of benefits for the viewers. What they’ll get if they do the action you want.
4. Take advantage of FOMO
Fear of missing out is part of our culture now thanks to the internet. Use this to your advantage.
Time-sensitive and community-type CTAs follow this tip. Buy now! 3 stocks left! is a great CTA example for an e-commerce store. Another example I see that is often used is the promos with timers on them.
HubSpot uses the same tip to entice marketers to join their mailing list: Join our community of over 300,000 marketers and business owners.
5. Match your message with your promise
What this simply means is your call-to-action should match what the viewer will expect when they click on it. For example, a CTA with a “download this e-book” should lead directly to a landing page with the same message. Otherwise, you’re only adding confusion.
Most people use their website’s homepage as the link for their CTAs.
6. Use devices to your advantage
Depending on the platform you’re using, you can customize the CTAs you display depending on the device they are using.
For example, a click to call message would make no sense on a desktop but would be perfect for a mobile display.
7. Be creative
You can use simple text links, or images, or flowery wordings. Regardless of what you choose, you should always A/B test which one works the best. Here’s how you can do this in Google Optimize.
Or, I can simply use this image below and they both will link back to the same landing page.
8. Use numbers when possible
People love numbers. Numbers mean specificity. Specificity means concrete results.
Not every marketer can promise concrete results because of two things: (1) they don’t really have a good product/service, or (2) they haven’t tried using their own product/service.
They simply use what the product managers say or what the spec sheets tell.
So, use the products/services first. If it helps you accomplish what it says it will, then that’s great. Use that!
So, What Are You Going to Do Now
Now you know how to write effective calls-to-action. It’s time to reput them to good use.
Go back through all your blog posts (and website pages) and remove all “click me” CTAs that don’t provide any value. Apply the tips listed here.
As an added bonus, you can also use these tips in your ads.
Take note that even if you follow all these tips, but don’t have a dedicated marketing offer, then your work will be futile. Newsletter subscriptions aren’t enough. You need to start creating content that is valuable to your audience.
Most organizations think that email marketing is all about sending the newsletter. Did you know that there are 12 different types of marketing email you can send?
In this article, I’ll go through all these 12 email marketing examples and present a way to categorize them:
In this post, I’ll be sharing 12 different types of marketing email you should be sending from your email marketing software.
Preparatory Points: Email Categorization
There are two broad categories of emails that you can send: one-to-many and one-to-one. This doesn’t include personal/manual emails —like the ones you send to your customer or your boss.
One-to-many emails, sometimes called informational emails or campaign-specific emails, are types of email you send out to a lot of people. It’s what you’re probably most familiar with. Newsletters fall under this category of emails.
One-to-one emails are also called transactional emails. They are only sent after a certain action and/or behavior. A password reset request or an order confirmation from an e-commerce store are examples of transactional emails.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started.
12 Different Types of Marketing Email
One-to-many Emails
1. Product/Service Update Email
A product/service update email is a type of email that 99% of organizations send out.
They (wrongly) call this a newsletter.
It’s an email about their products/services. Most of the time, its main message is a sale or a promo. Sometimes, it’s an update on features.
Here’s a great example from OptimizePress, a WordPress page builder.
Promos such as Black Friday sale, Christmas and holiday sale, year-end-sales also fall under this category since it talks about your products and services.
Like I said in other posts, there’s nothing wrong with it— unless it’s the only type of email you are sending.
2. Newsletters
The newsletter is a roundup of your blog posts and/or curated content.
It is NOT an email for promotions.
Promotion of your blog posts, maybe. But not sales related.
It is educational in nature.
Newsletters are used to deliver content to your reader’s inbox. For example, I am subscribed to the newsletters of WordStream, HubSpot, Jon Loomer, MailChimp, Copy Blogger, Close.io, and a whole lot more.
I subscribed to them because I want their content, WANT to read it. I look forward to it.
I learn from it.
Below’s a great example from Influence & Co, a content marketing agency. Take note that everything you find inside adds value to the reader. Click on the image to view a larger version.
If your readers are not excited about reading your newsletters, then most probably they are not educational content.
The content announcement email is an email that I have not seen a lot of companies do.
It’s an email you send that invites them to download and/or access the new content you just created.
For example, here’s one from WP Engine, one of the most well-known WordPress hosting.
The link above is an affiliate link. At no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase after clicking through the link.
Content, in this case, is a “big piece” of content. It’s not a regular blog post or article. It is something more significant.
They are examples of marketing offers or lead magnets. Something most companies aren’t using.
4. Event Invitation
As the name suggests, this type of email is an invitation to an event. It’s usually a one-time send; but for those who engaged, i.e. pre-registered to the event, they get sent more information about the event.
For example, you might announce a webinar to your mailing list. From there, those who register get reminder emails on the day of the webinar, 1-hour before, and 15-minutes before the actual webinar.
Here’s how that may look like. This series came from a webinar I recently attended by CopyBlogger.
Example: Webinar invite email
Example: Webinar on-the-day reminder email
Example: Webinar 1-hour reminder email
Example: Webinar 15-minute reminder email
These emails doesn’t have to stop here. You can branch out and do more to continue to engage your audience. When you do a webinar, you basically have 3 audiences:
People who registered and attended
People who registered, but didn’t attend
People who didn’t register
So, depending on those segments, you can create your “here’s your replay” email and make it more personalized. For example, to the first group, your messaging can go something like “thanks, here’s the replay to the webinar,” while the second group, you can say something like “sorry you missed the webinar, here’s the replay!”
This will help keep them engaged so they try out your product/service or whatever your offer will be.
5. Dedicated Send
This email is sent to a specific segment in your list about something.
The webinar reminder email I listed above is an example of a series of dedicated send emails.
You can use this for webinars, events, conference attendees, etc.
Here’s a great email from Aweber, an email marketing software.
6. Co-marketing Email
This type of email is when two or more organizations send an email promoting the other one to their respective email lists.
Most of the time, the organizers are related and complementary to each other. For example, a marketing agency and a social media scheduler partnering together to promote a webinar they will be hosting together.
Here’s an example where MobileMonkey is promoting an SEMRush event to his mailing list.
The link above is an affiliate link. At no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase after clicking through the link.
7. Social Media Send
And speaking of MobileMonkey, this type of “email” isn’t exactly an email but it’s done inside any social media that allows messaging.
LinkedIn is where this is most likely to occur. You can also put group messaging apps/channels/chatbots here. For example, Facebook Messenger, Viper, Whatsapp, Telegram, and Slack allows you to send broadcast messages.
In a way, it’s a one-to-many messaging but uses another platform instead of email.
8. Internal Updates
Email marketing is not limited just your prospects and customers.
Internal update emails are usually used by big organizations for announcements like corporate events, policy changes, etc.
Usually, HR and IT are the groups that send these types of email.
For HR, these are usually new employee hires and promotions
For IT, it’s mostly maintenance scheduling and/or cyber security best practices
But don’t stop there. It’s best to keep everyone updated on what’s happening around the organization—quarterly sales, new products lined up, what the executives are working on, etc.
For example, here’s a rather-public email from Tim Cook a few years back regarding their $1 trillion milestone.
One-to-one Emails
9. Confirmation Email
A confirmation email is a type of one-to-one email that summarizes a conversation and/or activity that the user just made.
If you bought from any e-commerce stores or signed up for a webinar or tradeshow online, you would have received a confirmation email immediately. That’s a great use of this transactional email.
Another instance this is used is during customer service chats or tickets. Upon finishing the ticket (assuming you provided your email), it will send you the transcript of the conversation.
Here’s an example from NordVPN, one of the most-trusted VPNs out there:
The link above is an affiliate link. At no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase after clicking through the link.
10. Thank You Email
A thank you email is a type of email that gets sent right after a user action. Most of the time, this is when a person filled out a form on your landing page to access a marketing offer.
Others call this a form submit kickback email or incentive email.
Here’s an example from close.com, a CRM software, on a guide I downloaded.
To give additional information about the marketing offer
For example, if you download the white paper I made, you will receive a thank you email that has a link to the thank you page. That page is where you can access the white paper.
If you’re hosting a webinar or event, of course, you can’t deliver on your promise right away. So, your thank you email should contain information about the webinar or event — date, time, topic, etc.
The confirmation emails are, in a sense, also a form of a thank you email.
11. Welcome Email
A welcome email is exactly what it is— an email (or series of email) that welcomes the new subscriber into the email list or community.
Here’s a great example from Skillshare when I signed up for their service before.
The purpose of the welcome email is to be helpful or give added value. It’s not a place to sell.
The Skillshare example fulfills these criteria by being helpful —giving me a free offer — and adding value —they also included a list of their most popular classes.
Take note that this welcome email is for a specific action only. In the example above, it’s for signup to skillshare.com.
In your case, you could set up a separate welcome email for new subscribers to your list, new trial sign-ups, etc. (hint: personalization and segmentation)
12. Lead Nurturing Email
Lead nurturing emails are undoubtedly my favorite among these types of marketing email. Why? Because it’s so easy to do yet so few do it.
Lead nurture emails are designed to supplement your sales process by providing helpful information at the right time. Here’s how you create one from scratch.
If you use some marketing automation tools, you already have access to this. All you need to do is create them.
Think about it this way: your sales process is driven by stages (usually called sales stages or pipeline stages). If you defined what each stage means properly, you’d have identified which information you need at each stage.
For example, if you only have a name and email, they would most likely be only at stage 1 only. But if you know what they want to buy, their budget, and their timeline, they might already be at stage 6 of your sales process.
Lead nurturing emails supplement this sales process by sending these people educational content that will help them decide better (thus, faster) by giving them the information they need even before asking.
A marketing offer is any content of significant value that people are willing to exchange their contact information for.
Other marketers call this a lead magnet or trip wires.
The most common marketing offer is the newsletter subscription. Another one is PDF downloads like industry reports, white papers, and e-books.
A marketing offer that is gaining popularity right now is webinars.
Whatever the offer is, the point here is that it has to be of significant value; otherwise, they won’t give out their contact information.
Two Essential Elements of a Successful Marketing Offer
1) Provide Value
A marketing offer that provides value is one of the things a lot of marketers fail to provide.
Most (foolishly) think that newsletter subscriptions are enough to generate leads for their organizations. That somehow, a magical form asking people to “subscribe” would be enough for them to give up their email addresses without anything in return.
Seriously, think about it. If you visit a website for the first time, would you be willing to give up your email address?
I don’t think so.
Now, what makes you think that these people who visit your site are any much different than you?
A marketing offer needs to provide value. Something that they (not you) think would help them with their problems. Something that would improve their lives.
Think about value from their perspective. Not yours. Not your organization.
2) Deliver on Your Promise
Another important element of a marketing offer is it has to deliver on the promise you made when you asked for their information.
Remember, a marketing offer sits behind a landing page. Then, when the person gets redirected to the thank you page, you should deliver on your promise either through the page itself or through the thank you email.
The mistake marketers also often make is that they use a newsletter subscription (which is a valid marketing offer), but don’t deliver on their promise.
Great companies use newsletter subscriptions to offer content. Something that provides value. Buffer with content on productivity. WordStream with content on PPCs. And a whole lot more.
So, What Are You Going to Do Now
A marketing offer needs to provide value and deliver on your promise. As I’ve said over and over, this has to be viewed from the eyes of your prospects and customers, not your organization.
This is a problem and not a constraint because by now, it’s a proven tactic that blogging and sharing them grow your traffic.
While you cannot “control” how whether people actually visit your site, by making yourself discoverable, you greatly increase your chances of getting more traffic.
Take a look at this case study. After doing 2 small changes, organic traffic grew by 76%.
Just because you have a website, it doesn’t mean people will find you. You have to make them discover you through content creation and distribution.
And when you start building traffic on your website, this brings us to the next problem…
2. Not enough leads
For marketers who are over the hump of vanity metrics, insufficient leads are the next thing they worry about.
Before diving deeper, let’s define a lead first.
At the most basic level, a lead is someone whose contact information is known to your organization.
The most effective way to generate leads today is to create marketing offers that people are willing to give up their contact information.
These marketing offers, often called lead magnets, can be any type of content that provides enough value.
These are PDF downloads like case studies and white papers, webinars, etc.
How this works is you have several landing pages set up that “gates” your offer. Once people fill-up the form on the landing page, they are redirected to a thank you page where they can access the offer and/or explain what to expect next.
If you don’t have this setup, don’t expect leads to come pouring in.
So, you finally solved your problems with traffic and leads. Now, we can tackle the part where most organizations focus on —getting more customers.
It is important to note that we started with increasing your visits and then your leads. You can’t expect to generate revenue from customers immediately without solving the first two stages — visits and leads. This is the marketing and sales funnel in action.
The most effective way to get new customers without being too pushy is through lead nurturing.
Without going too much into detail, what that means is you need to have a strategy to group different people into segments according to (1) similar behaviors and/or problems, and (2) stage in the buying cycle.
For example, you’re selling power banks / portable batteries. Using the first criterion, you can group people into reasons they use the power banks.
For travel
For that extra juice while doing my daily activities
My phone battery’s dead and I need to constantly charge
Easily, these groups have different needs, therefore, generic messages won’t work for all of them.
Then, using the buying cycle, they could either be at one of the following stages :
Awareness – figuring out if they really need a power back
Consideration – looking for the best power banks and which ones are perfect for their devices
Decision – already narrowed down the list. Currently looking at reviews, etc.
Again, using a generic message across the entire buying cycle doesn’t work.
The effective way to get these people to buy from you is to create targeted content that addresses their specific needs.
So, What Are You Going to Do Now
The only way to effectively solve these common problems in digital marketing is to approach is phase-by-phase.
Start by increasing your visits by creating content and distributing it.
Once the traffic is there, you now figure out what’s the best way to convert them into leads.
Finally, implement a lead nurturing strategy that will eventually turn these leads into paying customers.
Not enough traffic, leads, and customers are not constraints. They are problems that you can solve and address. Yes, it’s hard. But again, there’s something you can do about it.
A Thank You Page is a page on your website that your visitor can access a certain marketing offer and/or tell them what to expect next. In most cases, this is also the part where conversion tracking is placed.
Here’s an image that you’re probably familiar with.
Let me explain the 5 parts briefly:
Generic Website Pages. These are the static pages of your website, e.g. the homepage.
Blog Posts. These are the dynamic portion of your website, e.g. this post, or this one.
Landing Page. Landing pages are specific pages on your website designed to convert visitors. It’s used to “gate” certain types of content so only those that fill-up a form will be able to access the content. After the visitor fills up a form, they are redirected to the thank you page.
Thank You Page. I’ll discuss this more below.
Thank You Email / Delivery Email. This is a special kind of email. It can only be “accessed” by those who went through your landing page (as depicted by the dotted line). It can either contain a link back to the thank you page or used to deliver the offer itself (download link for a PDF report).
Here’s how they all work together. I labeled them so it’s easier to follow along.
4 Key Elements of a Thank You Page
1) Bring Back Navigation Menu
Now that you have successfully converted your visitor, the next step is to keep them engaged.
That means you bring back the navigation menu so they can take a look at the other parts of your website again.
2) Show Your Appreciation
Kindness goes a long way.
They just entered their private information. If they don’t know you, there’s some sort of doubt and fear in the minds.
Simply thank them and show your appreciation.
3) Deliver on the Offer
This is the MOST important element that I’ve seen so many marketers fail to include properly.
I’ll say this again. This is the most important element.
The thank you page must deliver on the promise you gave beforehand immediately and clearly.
For example, if you decided to download the case study or the white paper I made, upon reaching the thank you page, you will be able to download it without it. No more additional steps. No further hassles.
Sure, there are variations in which you can do this. For example, you don’t put the download link in the thank you page, but use the thank you email/delivery email instead. And that’s ok.
But the crucial part here is that you have to CLEARLY explain that.
Here’s a great example where the offer is a webinar. Since you can’t access that webinar immediately, they clearly explained the next steps and what to expect.
I’ve seen a lot of organizations get this wrong. For example, they offer a PDF download. Then, when you get to the thank you page they are trying to sell you something. Then you try a cmd + F to search for the word “download” and it’s nowhere to be found.
So you check the thank you email. It’s the same thing. No download link. Only salesy message. They ask you to subscribe or pay them this to access it further. That’s misleading. And, in my opinion, unethical.
Add a secondary offer or call-to-action (CTA) on your thank you page.
This works best if you add the logical next step in the process.
For example, your offer is a free social media calendar. Then, your logical next step offer might be a free trial of your social media scheduling tool (assuming you’re Buffer or HootSuite).
In the example I used, I simply added the only other offer I have. While it’s not the best use of the secondary offer, it is still better than having nothing at all.
(On the other hand, it’s actually a logical next step if you own your own business. Think about it. You want to find out more if digital marketing is for you, so you download the case study. Then, assuming you’re convinced that you need digital marketing but can’t do it yourself, you’re probably thinking of outsourcing it to a consultant or an agency. That’s the reason why I added the white paper for download there.)
Also, feel free to use videos here or more graphical images.
Use Your Thank You Pages for Conversion Tracking
Tracking conversions is one of the activities you should focus on as a marketer (instead of looking at likes and shares).
Conversions are any meaningful actions performed by your visitors. These are defined by you. Most of the time, the industry and/or the campaign determines what a conversion is.
Some examples of conversions are form submissions and a purchase.
These conversions are, traditionally, tracked using thank you pages.
Why?
Because theoretically, no visitor should be able to reach your thank you page unless they fill out the form on the landing page first.
One of the attributes of an effective thank you page is a unique URL — meaning, a unique page on your site. Just as you should have multiple landing pages (for different offers), you should also have multiple thank you pages. It’s best to have a 1:1 ratio. That way, you can customize your message every single time.
Imagine if you only have one thank you page for the different landing pages you have. So a person who downloaded a PDF will see the same page a person who subscribes to your newsletter. How, then, can you personalize your appreciation?
A lot of popular analytics software and advertising platforms use this kind of tracking. Google Analytics, AdWords, and Facebook all use the thank you page as a way to track conversions.
What About You
Are you using landing pages and thank you pages on your website? If not, you’re probably not hitting your conversion targets. Remember, a landing page’s average conversion rate is only between 1-3%.
If you’re like most organizations, the only landing page you have on your website is the contact us page. Think about how many traffic you need to visit that contact us page before you hit your targets.
And if you’re not creating marketing offers and setting up landing pages on your site, you’re probably saying that digital marketing is not for your industry.
But really, is it because of the industry, or is it because of you?
There are a lot of reasons why your email list isn’t growing. But from observing over 20 email marketing accounts, the biggest reason your email list isn’t growing is inconsistency with your message and your offer.
Here are a few examples where a lot of marketers fail at this:
They offer a newsletter subscription but only sends out sales messages. A newsletter subscriber expects content, not promos and discounts.
They offer a PDF for free download but requires you do 20 more steps or make a subscription before you get the download. Then you get enrolled in a never ending sales pitch message.
The promise doesn’t match with the delivery. It’s inconsistent. And it just adds frustration to your viewers.
But wait a minute. You might be telling yourself, “aren’t newsletters supposed to contain my products and services?”
We’ll get to that later on. For now, let’s explore the concept of message match.
Message Match Principle
Unbounce calls the matching of promise-delivery message match. Here’s what they say in their website:
A measure of how well your landing page copy matches the phrasing of the ad or link that brought the visitor there. For PPC marketers, this means matching your ad copy to your landing page headline. Strong message match increases conversions because it reassures people they’ve come to the right place.
While they were talking primarily about PPC and advertising, the principle remains the same — your call-to-action must be consistent with what the user sees after performing an action.
Make sure you remove as much friction as possible. This makes it easy for people to convert.
Message Match in Action
Let’s go back to the question I posted earlier about newsletters containing promotional messages about your organization’s products and services.
If you haven’t guessed already, the answer is no.
A BIG FAT NO.
Masking your promotional messages as as a newsletter is one of the most ineffective email marketing tactics so prevalent in the Philippines.
In fact, because there are no regulating bodies about spam in the country, email marketing remains one of the most primitive aspect of digital marketing.
On the other hand, it is an area where you can make a huge difference by making small changes. Below are some of them:
Don’t send that “newsletter” you’re working in right now
Your email marketing activities should not be focused on sending promotional messages alone. If you look at the vast majority of emails you can send, that’s only 1/12 of the entire repertoire.
It’s like playing basketball. You don’t score only by using layups. There are jump shots, free throws, and 3-pointers. No team ever won a game using only 1 way to score.
