I don’t just do case studies — I also do plenty of email copywriting. It’s a great marketing channel because doing it is easy (when you’re good), you can test email copy instantly, and it offers amazing ROI.
Oh, and it’s fun to write about stuff in your life and business and make some moolah off it.
But speaking of moolah, nailing the call-to-action is how you get that $$$. That’s where the prospect clicks, after all.
One area of confusion I see on CTAs is the question of “how many?” In theory, adding more CTAs is always better, right? More chances to click = more clicks?
Well, it’s more nuanced than that. Here’s some guidance on CTA count.
Always Use One Offer, Except…
Let’s get to the point. In almost every case, you should only have one offer per email.
It’s simple: the more choice you give your customers, the more brainpower they have to exert selecting one of those choices.
I mean, think back to the last time you were at a chain restaurant. Those tend to have lengthy menus. Don’t you have a hard time choosing what to eat sometimes?
I know I do. It’s agonizing.
(Hell, maybe your city is blessed with tons of food options. That only makes it worse — now you have to choose a restaurant first!)
That’s called analysis paralysis.
Now, that’s taken to the extreme, of course. No one’s giving 100 offers in an email.
But unlike diners, who are stuck in the eating establishment, your readers can just click away at any time. Each offer you add to the email makes your reader more likely to become indecisive and give up.
So for the main body, stick with one offer.
That said, I did say except…
See, I learned a technique from some other copywriters where you add a bunch of your offers to your signature. For example, say you sell a $10 eBook, a $150 course, and $500/month coaching (wild guessing some numbers there).
You automate each email to have a bulleted list of these offers with some additional bullet copy to sell them.
The difference here is that it’s not tied into the main body of your email. It’s just floating at the very bottom, making it easier for customers to purchase other products. The main body copy should stick to one angle that ties into one offer.
Think of it like this: you walk into a car dealership, and a car salesman will ask you some questions and point you to the car you want. But that doesn’t mean they hide away all the Panameras the moment you lock eyes with a Boxster (can you tell what kind of cars I like?)
The other big exception is the implicit call-to-action. This is where you use natural anchor text. You may be able to sprinkle in links to other offers throughout the body copy of longer emails.
The thing is, you’re not telling the reader to click that link (you aren’t “calling them to action”), but it’s there “just in case” because you link to it from a relevant word or phrase. In other words, write the email like normal, then link to an offer on a word or phrase relevant to that offer. You won’t have to change the email copy at all.
Multiple CTAs for One Offer
Now, just because you should stick with one offer… doesn’t mean you just have to stick with one CTA.
In fact, 2 or even 3 could work, depending on email length.
I see this fairly often with info products and membership websites. A big example would be clients in the finance/trading education space. They’ll start with a quick blurb about a recent win, followed by a link pointing them to their membership/trade alert service. They then detail the win a bit more, followed by yet another call-to-action with different copy than the first.
Not sure if this has a name, but I’ll call it CTA laddering.
See, CTA laddering works because you still only have one offer. At the same time, you’re letting customers click when they feel the urge to — whether that’s right now or after they read a little more.
Oh, and you reduce the amount of scrolling they have to do.
Once again, you could try using some natural anchor text as a 2nd or 3rd CTA.
Let’s go with the classic “make money online” example, where you sell a “make money online course.” You write an email related somehow to the subject.
Say one of the lines goes like this: “Doing XYZ while making money online sounds like a… [email continues].”
You could link “making money online” to your course.
Then, your explicit CTA (which, by the way, is the “click here” type) could then be “Click here to grab my XYZ course on making your first buck online!”
CTAs: One Offer (With Exceptions), Multiple Calls
When you’re selling, you only want to sell your customer one thing. You can have other options available, but only in passing — whether in your PS or as implicit calls-to-action.
That said, you can use multiple CTAs on one offer. In many cases, you should.
Ultimately, on that latter point, testing will show you the way. Test different versions of the same email on your list and see which converts more.
Oh, and if you’d like someone to help you write your emails (and figure out the number of CTAs to use), contact me today.