The Art of Designing Call to Action Buttons For Email Marketing and Websites
So, did you know that in A/B email marketing tests ‘Start’ or ‘Continue’ call-to-action buttons work better than ‘Sign Up’ buttons? Or that you can have more than one call to action within your internet marketing piece.
Confused already? Let me explain it from the beginning.
A/B Testing Helps You Choose which Call-to-Action Works
When sending email blasts to your subscribers, most email platforms provide an A/B option that gives you the ability to send two emails. Both emails differ depending on content, subject line, or call to action. In the case of MailChimp it allows you to send the email to, lets say, 20% of your list. Once the email has been sent you can analzye the results to find out which buttons and links were clicked the most. This will help you choose the most effective emails.
Every email blast should have a specific call-to-action that motivates the recipient to take the next step and CLICK to a co-branded landing page. For those promoting newsletters or membership access, they normally use a ‘Sign up’ button. But does this really drive click-thru rates? Not always.
The Art of Designing Call-to-Action Buttons
Above Image: Example of Good Design
The truth is that there is an ART to designing call to action buttons. Yes, its an art. Most marketers do not have any design experience and don’t realize that people use more than words to make a decision.
What else matters, you ask?
- Size of call to action button versus surrounding elements
- Use of contrast colors
- The location of the button
- Use of whitespace and padding
- The number of call-to-action buttons on one page
- Subtle design touches
And really the list can go on and on.
This is why when I design email blasts and website landing pages, I take my time. I don’t publish the first design that comes to my mind. I continue to tweak, tweak, and tweak until all the elements above have been considered. For one company, I was able to boost their email marketing open rate by 50% after I redesigned their email blasts. Trust me it works.
If you’d like more information on how to choose and design call-to-actions, check out these links:
The Principles of Great Call to Action Buttons
Call to Action Buttons: Examples and Best Practices
Excerpt: Realistically, there is no such thing as a “work/life balance”. I think of it instead as a “work/life blend”. Sometimes your work blends into your life (working late or on weekends, doing what you need to do to deliver quality results). Why shouldn’t your life blend into your work (taking an afternoon off to spend with your kids)?
Freedom Center Invites Bloggers to Exclusive Preview of “Invisible: Slavery Today” Exhibit
Friday, I had the opportunity to visit the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio as part of an exclusive blogger preview of their new exhibit - Invisible: Slavery Today, which opened Saturday, October 9.
Slavery Today chronicles the lives of 5 individuals who have experienced modern slavery in the form of forced labor, bonded indenture, child slavery, sex trafficking, and domestic servitude.
Experiential Design - The User Experience
I was very excited to get an early look at the exhibit. For about four years, I worked for Jack Rouse Associates the original exhibit designer for the Center. Working in the exhibit design industry, I gained a whole new perspective on design. Everything done is centered on the “user experience”. It’s about using imagery, words, touch, smell, and sounds to create an atmosphere that motivates a visitor to understand and relate to the topic being discussed. There is even a name for it: “experiential design”. This user experience can be translated into every part of marketing and advertising.
While at the preview, I had the pleasure of speaking to Brock Walker, from Touch Worldwide, the design firm chosen to create the the exhibit. He mentioned that although he designs exhibits for Corporate America, their was something very special about designing an exhibit that can actually motivate change and is for a good cause. He took time to discuss with me the exhibit, his experiences, and even asked for my opinion about how the story flowed through the space. That, in itself, spoke volumes about their work ethic and was greatly appreciated.
The exhibit told a tragic story, while still maintaining the dignity of their subjects. The most central piece of the exhibit told the story of sex workers. They used video on a touchscreen monitor to immerse me into Sahlia’s story. While listening to the video, I immediately began to wonder if I would have been able to survive such hardships. Many of the exhibit pieces allowed visitors to use their sense of touch to be educated.
NURFC Collaboration with Local Social Media
But what impressed me the most was NURFC’s use of the social media community to promote the new exhibit and public education on modern slavery. Many non-profit organizations (especially in the arts) do not understand the amount of resources that are available outside traditional marketing.
The issue of Modern Slavery can be a difficult tale to weave. Many people do not want to even know that it exists. This provides a great challenge for a marketing team. However, word-of-mouth advertising, can motivate people to visit these places of art and education in ways that a billboard can’t. When you see your friends or trusted advisors talking about Modern Slavery it makes it real and a topic of discussion within the full context.
This blogger preview shows that the NURFC is taking full of advantage of new media and understand the importance of reaching out to the community.
Think about it: If 20 bloggers attended the event…times that by how many tweets or facebook statuses they sent out, and add to that the amount of traffic each blogger get to their blog. Can you imagine how many people where educated by Modern Slavery in just a few days? Translate that into to the money saved by using WOM over an alternate method of marketing and you can see how this could benefit the NURFC well into the future.
It will be interesting to see how they continue to use Social Media for future exhibits and campaigns.
Thanks to Jeremy K. Smith (#jeremyksmitch) for making me aware of this event and Jamie Brandt (#nurfcjamie) for the preview.
Monday Morning Fix
Art makes me happy. This post is purely for me. lol.
via artlove:
(by Camila do Rosário)
One resource not mentioned, but I love: http://www.cacoo.com - A user friendly drawing tool that allows you to create a variety of diagrams, sitemaps, website mockups, and more. And YES, its free!
TIME IS MONEY:
Bring TIM!® (Time Is Money) - a fun yet useful office clock that tallies the dollars spent in long meetings. Simply enter the number of people in the room, ballpark an average hourly wage, and press the illuminated start button. Everyone will be amazed as the dollars pile up with every second that ticks by.
If this doesn’t make you rethink how much time is wasted in meetings, I dont know what will. Creative, brainstorm meetings can be quite exhausting. This is triggering a new post about creating ROI from meetings. Look for it this week!
*I’m not selling this, but you can click photo to visit the website.
How to Choose the Right Email Marketing Platform
LinkedIn Email Marketing Question :
“I’m considering making a switch from Constant Contact to MailChimp; can anyone offer any advice about these two programs and if this would be a beneficial move?”
I do ALOT of email marketing and have used several platforms. So I thought it made sense to give my personal answer to this question.
Answer: It depends on the amount of resources and programming and design expertise you have on staff.
I personally prefer ExactTarget. However, its best used when you have a large list and a website/html designer on staff because you will need to design customized email templates. It’s more of an integrated marketing product versus a “I just want to send an email one day a week” type program. Their analytics/metric reports are very in-depth as well
I currently use MailChimp at work. I design customized html emails instead of using their pre-templates. My issue with MailChimp is that although it is “cheap”, their list feature and reports are more limiting.
ExactTarget allowed me to have one contact and assign them to multiple lists so that there is always just one subscriber in the system. MailChimp, unfortunately makes me upload that contact for every list. This can artifically double, triple, (keep going) my subscriber lists for no reason. I don’t think that’s efficient AT all.
However, MailChimp’s campaign setup is great if you have both a designer and an email marketing assistant. The designer can upload the html and leave the rest to the assistant. Setting up and delivering email campaigns are quite easy. My marketing assistant has no problem setting up and sending email blasts. Some platforms can make it difficult for non-html people to manage campaigns.
This is the first time my company has used an email platform. So I chose something basic and affordable to allow them to get used to the idea. Now that they see its benefits, I will probably be upgrading to a more robost platform soon.
Questions to Ask Before Choosing an eMarketing Platform
- What is your budget? Can you afford a full solutions platform or do you only have $15 to spare right now?
- How will you design your emails? Will you be able to design your own customized/html templates? Or will you need a platform that provides easy templates.
- Who will be controlling and managing the email campaigns? Will they have the expertise to handle a more robust platform or do they need a WYSIWYG editor?
By answering these questions honestly, you will be able to choose the right platform for you.
How to Add a Tweet Button to Tumblr Blog
Every day I tweak my tumblr blog. It’s definitely a work in progress. Today, I realized that I could only tweet my post from inside the post editor. If anyone came to my page they would not be able to tweet my post. This bothered me a bit, so I went to find a solution.
Its really quite simple.
- Go to: http://twitter.com/goodies/tweetbutton
- Choose your button.
- Choose 1-2 twitter profiles that you’d like to recommend to your reader. (At least recommend your own.)
- Copy the script code at the bottom.
- Go the your Tumblr Customize page and choose Theme.
- In the custom code cut and paste the script between {block:Posts} {/block:Posts}
NOTE: There may be more than one {block:Posts} areas. DO NOT place the script in the title or metatag section. Choose the last place you find {block:Posts}.
Questions? Just ask.
The Reach of Twitter: 29% of Tweets Get a Reaction
via jeremyksmith:
A recent report by Sysomos shows that 29% of tweets generate a Retweet or Reply.
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams claims that 90 million tweets are produced per day. That equates to 26.1 million Retweets and Replies per day.
Interaction on this level produces countless connections and opportunities to share information, socially validate, or just goof off. Still these statistics are very impressive and noteworthy.
This article illustrates the danger of using blind networks to advertise, as this can result in ads appearing alongside content that’s contradictory – or even damaging to the brand or product.
(Source: econsultancy.com)
