When social media platforms just started springing up, I remember many experts assuming social media would kill email marketing. In fact, the latter only got stronger…
Maintaining a loyal, active and steadily growing list is one of the strongest assets you can build: This is what can secure your business against various rankings fluctuations and emerging competitors.
Table of Contents
Follow My Experiment
These months I am experimenting with my blog calls-to-actions (primarily for the sake of self-education but also to be able to share my results with my community and help others grow).
This article is my first step in the long-lasting experiment: Making the most of calls-to-actions.
While I think that A/B testing is important (and that’s what I am already doing), pre-testing materials are even more important: This enables you to take what I’ve got and run your own tests because what may have worked on my site may be counter-efficient on yours. So take what I’ve collected below and run your own tests (and share them below!)
First a few things that have been covered pretty well already:
- Colors of calls-to-action are pretty important
- Contrast of the call-to-action is even more important (Make it stand out!)
- Shape and the size may matter too. They say, rounded buttons get more clicks (I haven’t tested that yet because, I believe, that involves changing the whole interface concept to rounded… Let me know if you test this out!)
- To set up your CTAs, try using conversational forms or use one of these CTA plugins
Now to different ways to word your call-to-action:
Call-to-Action Button Wording
Express Urgency
Have you ever contemplated buying something, and then thought to yourself “I’ll think it over.” The same thing may happen to your blog readers preventing them from taking an action.
Creating a sense of urgency gets users to take action immediately instead of holding off on the purchase. More often than not, tomorrow becomes eventually, which ends up being never. The sooner you can get people to take action, the better.
Here are some effective call-to-action phrases that will make people rush to grab what you’re selling
- Hurry
- Get instant access
- Join now
Or try adding words like these to your current CTA to experiment:
- Immediately
- Now
Here are more action triggers expressing urgency:
- Only X days left
- Closing soon
- Today only
- Last chance
- Offer ends on “date”
Provide Clear Instruction
It’s a well-known theory that if you want someone to perform some action, you’ll get better results by telling them exactly what to do.
MarketingSherpa have tested it and found that “click here” link text increases click-through rates by more than 8%.
So this is something to test out:
- Click here to subscribe
- Subscribe by Email
Express the Sense of “Joining the Community”
Joining a group of people of common goals, feeling not alone is a powerful incentive, so this is something to try:
- Be a part of
- Be(come) a member
- Join the team!
Instill the Feeling of Exclusivity / Win
Everyone wants to feel special, so this can be an effective action trigger:
- Become a VIP (subscriber)
- Join to the winning side
Non-commercial
I suspect this is a later trend: Web users are getting tired of commercial CTAs pressing you to sign up to something on each page they visit.
It makes sense to avoid boring your user with the same call-to-action they see everywhere else and offer them to “learn more”. It invites the user to explore on his own without pressure.
- Find out more
- Learn more
- More details
- Get started
- Get notified
- Read it here!
- I’d love updates
- Tell me more
- Explore more
Use Imperative Mode
Giving your readers the power to command instead of being instructed: It may work well for the certain types of readers (I know it would probably work well for me!)
- Send Guide!
- Send Videos!
- Send Checklist!
- Show me the data
- Get my report
- Take me there
- Let me in
- Send the Recipe
Try Emotional Wording
These don’t fall into a particular category but many of them are worth testing… Also some of them may match the tone of your site better than the others:
- I want in!
- Let’s do it
- Yes, please!
- Yes, I’d like to learn more
- Sure thing!
- I want to increase my traffic
- I’m Ready
- Let’s Party
- I’m a rockstar
- What’s the secret
- Mom’s Only
- Okie, Dokie
- Get it While It’s Hot
- Kick fear to the curb
- See for yourself!
- Count me in
- Get it!
- Discover the benefits
Power words
Finally, here are some words you may want to add to your current button to see if any yields more action:
- Free
- New
- Now
- Guarantee
- Results
- My (There’s a study showing that “my” work better than “your”)
Download All the CTA Button Variations!
Grab your free download here and play around:
More things to test…
Action Triggers to Use Near the Button:
- Don’t miss your chance
- You can’t “win” if you don’t play
- This terrific offer won’t last long
- Years from now you’ll say coulda, woulda, shoulda if you don’t subscribe today
- Those who hesitate are lost
- Some might look at this offer and ask, Why? We say to you, Why not?
- You won’t know what you’re missing if you pass up this chance
- ‘Tis a far, far better thing if you subscribe now
(More on these in my next article, please do submit the ones that work for you here)
An interesting tactic I see more and more recently is to add a “cancel” button and phrase it the way it acts like an action trigger:
- No I am happy with my current rankings
- No I don’t want to make more income
Title Case or Not?
I couldn’t find good case studies id the CTA should be capitalized or not. Two arguments to consider:
- Title case can make your button label feel like a command. Hence, capitalization may make it stand out, it may make your CTA more convincing
- For longer CTAs, sentence case can make your button text feel like a dialogue, thus more friendly.
Which one do YOU prefer?
Two-Step Optins
Some marketers prefer to use two-step opt-ins (using the same plugin), so the CTA simply says ‘Get the free report’ (no email field), and this then takes you to a second screen where you enter the email address.
The theory is they have said yes once, before you ask for their address so they are more bought-in, and ready to give it.
A Few Helpful Case Studies Already Done
- [Case Studies] How Failed A/B Tests Can Increase Conversion Rates
- “Your account” performed 24.95% worse than “my account”
- “Get my free 30-day trial” performed 90% better than “Get your 30-day trial”.
- Adding a privacy policy reduced sign-ups by 18.70%
- On the importance of the contrast: Measuring The Impact Of Heat Maps On Landing Page Conversion
- Add more in the comments!
How YOU Can Contribute
- Please contribute to my Brainstorm project with the cool “Action triggers” (Text to place close to the button to trigger more action)
- Please provide your experience, tests, results in the comments below! That would help us all!
Thanks to my helpful MyBlogU contributors who suggested CTA button wording variations below: @irinaweber048 of SE Ranking, @SakaneeJ of Blogging Aid, @Amabaie of THGM ghostwriters, @JKatzaman largofinancialservices.com, Brightsidesmktg, @N8hanWilliams of Crazy Eye Marketing, @JEAlford, @northresearch of Myth Buster, @DIYMarketers DIY Marketers, @seotify Seotify, @duggansara of Sara Duggan | Blogger’s Assistant, @EP_pturner of MaXXers, @websuccess Web Success Team, @Laura_Rike of Envizion Advertising, @SeegerN of Seeger Consulting Inc., @timfel of TimFelmingham.com
