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Email Marketing Guide 2: Email design & content

6. Including an email call to action

The email Call to Action (CTA) is the 'pay off' for your email newsletters and should be carefully thought out. You need to have a CTA in every single email sent by the company - whether it is a news alert or a monthly email newsletter.

A CTA should give your subscribers choices for contacting you. Use active language; instead of 'learn how' use 'learn now'. Also test your CTA. One way is to show your email newsletter to someone who has not seen it and ask them to find the action points on a page. They should be able to locate them within three seconds.

Use the CTA on more than one area of the web page. For example, each time you list a product, service or event put a call to action with each one.

If you are looking to build your subscriber list, a clear CTA to subscribe will be an important part of your subscription process. Make it easy - it should not take more than 20 seconds to subscribe to your email newsletter.

Here are some examples of communication channels that can be offered in a CTA:

• Fax - Invite readers to print off the page, fill out the information and fax it to you.
• Phone - Don't limit contact to an email address. List a phone number; people may have one last question they want to ask before they make the purchase.
• Email - People regularly print articles and pass them on to others, often a decision maker. Rather than have an "email us" live link, show the specific address e.g. newsletter@company.com.
• Forward to a colleague - Your reader may not find the article relevant but may have a colleague who is very interested. Don't forget to have a Subscribe Box in your email newsletter in case the colleague also wants to sign up for your email newsletter.
• Fill out this form - Once again encourage people to act now - make it easy. Offer an incentive, such as a discount if the order comes from the email newsletter.

Related article: Does your email newsletter inspire action?

Areas covered in this guide

• Introduction
• Email newsletter subject lines
• Email newsletter layout
• Email newsletter content
• Personalised email newsletters
• > Email calls to action