The CTA in Email Marketing

CTA stands for Call to action. The term refers to the elements of our email or website that are intended to provoke an action in the user. These are usually buttons or banners that call for interaction.  Even so, we must not forget that there are other elements that can be interpreted as CTAs by the user and we must not miss the opportunity to impact them. For example, although in an email, our main CTA is a button that leads to a landing to register for a promotion, the images and logo in the header of our email can be interpreted by the user as elements with which to interact.
The CTA may simply be a simple link, and may not even require an online interaction (usually a click), but may instead seek to generate a offline action (go to the shop, attend an event, print a voucher...)
Here are some of them ideas to optimise the efficiency of your CTAs:
– Locate at least one, above the foldthat is, before the user has to scroll.
– It attracts attention: Use contrasting colours in relation to the environment, or even animated GIFs like this one:

 
Some movement (without being exaggerated and disturbing the user) can attract the user's eye and guide the action.
– Focus attention on the desired action. Try not to blur the intent of the message by leading to too many actions in the same email.
- Even if the destination is the same, the ideal is to repeat the CTA throughout the email (without being too repetitive). For example, make the CTA visible without scrolling, but repeat it at the end of the email so that the user does not have to scroll back up to click.
– Reduce the number of clicks from email to conversion of your target.
– Maintain a consistent image in the CTA, both in the email and in the landing page if there is one, because if we vary the visual appearance we can confuse the user.
– Deliver what you promise. Do not play with attractive CTAs that do not correspond to what they hide behind them. It is no use having a high click-through rate on the CTA if the user does not convert, and with a CTA that leads to confusion we will not achieve conversion and can also make the user feel deceived and lose their trust.
– Don't make the user have to search on the landing page what they expected to find when they clicked on your email. For example, in catalogue type emails where several products are shown, some brands link to a generic page or to the e-commerce homepage, where the user must then search for the product in which he/she was interested. Whenever possible, in this type of email, you should link to the specific products or sections to which the images in the email refer.
– TestThis is a piece of advice that we end up giving in almost all contexts, but it is especially important in the case of CTAs. Their colour, shape, location, text, etc. can have a very significant impact on the results of email campaigns, which is why it is one of the most frequent tests.