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How To Craft Great Emails 3/3: Create a Compelling Call to Action

Posted by James Charles

The final piece of the email puzzle is the call to action (CTA). Your members have picked out your great subject line from a sea of others in their busy inbox, clicked on it, navigated through the enticing title, images and interesting body text and are ready to act on your compelling offer.

You need to make sure they can easily do this.

A call to action is necessary whenever you need or want a member or prospective member to do something. It provides them with the next step they should take in their interaction with you; whether that step is big, e.g. joining the club, or small, e.g. giving their opinion on the group exercise class they attended yesterday.

Here we are focusing specifically on CTAs within email, but they are an important part of any interaction you have. Those of you who joined us for our March 2016 webinar know that a call to action is also effective when used in face-to-face interactions on the gym floor –  gym floor interactions with high-risk members which end in a commitment to return on a future date (the CTA in the conversation) can more than double their length of membership.

The CTA you use in your email can take many forms – book a group exercise class, claim a free guest pass (just don’t use the word ‘free’ in your subject line as it may result in your email being dumped in a member’s junk folder) or asking for feedback about your facilities etc. There are plenty of possibilities. Just remember; to be effective, your CTA needs to follow on from what you have just shared in the email.

Here are our top tips for creating compelling email CTAs:

  • Use a button – rather than a plain text hyperlink. It’s easier, and more satisfying, to click.
  • Make it bright and bold – use colours which stand out against the background – orange, green or a strong blue work well on a white background.
  • Tell your members what they should do – whether its ‘Click Here’, ‘Learn More’ or ‘Book Now’, use a simple, short instruction (HubSpot, an online marketing software provider) which relates to what you have been talking about in the body of the email – there should be a clear link between what you are asking a member to do and what they have just read.
  • Don’t overwhelm your members! – When it comes to calls to action less is more; just one, maybe two, CTAs gives a member plenty to choose from (Econsultancy, digital business resource, events and training company).

 

But most importantly…

  • Get to Know Your Audience! – constantly test and refine your CTA’s so that they work for your members (Litmus, a popular email inbox preview tool).

Check out the original post here

Topics: Insider, Customer Service, Marketing, Retention

Written by James Charles

James Charles

James is Marketing Executive at TRP; the leading providers of customer experience management solutions to the global health and fitness industry. A self-proclaimed marketing geek, he has a particular passion for customer experience and is fascinated with all things digital. In his role at TRP, James is involved in a wealth of different activities from blogging and content creation through to events production.

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