Change your calls to action & see your click-through rates soar

I recently set about the simple task of reviewing calls to action, as part of some multivariate testing to try to increase email click rates for one of my biggest clients. I looked at options for buttons, text links, banners, header, footer and so on for a good few hours, and to be quite honest, I didn’t make a great deal of progress. I was thinking about this in far too much depth. Could the client already have fully optimized and consistent calls to action that can’t be improved upon? Possibly, but very unlikely, I thought. I decided to see if I could find any possibilities if I really took things back to basics and really questioned absolutely every little detail. There was a multivariate test coming up and if I didn’t take advantage of this, it would be months before I got another chance.

The only aspect of the clients’ calls to action that I could find any real uplift in, was colour. The client made it quite clear that the colour of buttons and text links in their emails was not up for debate. They must remain the same colour as their website, which is red. After numerous tests, with green buttons versus red buttons, the green buttons actually drove over 8% more clicks. Needless to say, when I presented the results back to the client and they tested these in full in a live campaign, I hardly needed to convince them to allow an exception.

I’ve found that finding the right colour CTA’s for your company, varies from industry to industry, business to business. If you find brand & consistency obstacles in your path when testing calls to action, remember that your job is to try and interrupt someone that is reading through their inbox. Your job is more difficult than that of the website because of this, so try to positively challenge any resistance, ask for a small-scale test segment that will still give you a significant result and let the results speak for themselves.

Try it and let me know how you get on.

Tags: buttons, click through rates, email calls to action, email design, Email Marketing, Email Marketing Strategy, usability