4 Tactics to Strengthen Your Nonprofit Email Calls to Action

A lot of elements go into creating a successful email campaign — from great storytelling to all of the technical elements.

Kristy McCarley, founder of Pure Firefly, and Alex Gallagher, email marketing specialist at Pure Firefly, led the virtual session, “Push the Right Buttons: Elevate Your Email Game With Compelling Calls to Action” at the Nonprofit Technology Conference on Wednesday.

When it comes to an email call to action, it’s important to determine what action you want the recipient to take next, McCarley said. A donation ask might include a call to action to “Donate now,” while an educational email might encourage the recipient to “Read more.” If you’re looking for someone to become more involved with your cause, you might prompt the reader to “Get involved,” “Become an ambassador” or “Volunteer.”

She also emphasized that every email should include at least one call to action.

“It still surprises me when I see emails that have no call to action because that leaves the subscriber not knowing what to do next or where to go next,” she said. “If they have a question, or if they just wanna learn more about the organization or the event or whatever the subject matter is, always have a call to action. Even if it's just ‘Contact us’ or ‘Learn more’ or ‘Go to our website,’ it could be something that simple.”

As you design your call-to-action strategy for email, McCarley suggested considering these questions regarding your overall subscribers — and even your donors, volunteers or other supporters specifically:

• What do you want your subscriber journey to look like?
• Where do you want your subscribers to go?
• What are the steps you want them to take?
• What is your overall goal?
• Does every step within this journey lead to the next step and another opportunity to engage with your brand?

Here are four ways to create a call-to-action strategy that hooks your supporters.

1. Improve the Design of Your Call-to-Action Button

If the call to action is your goal or desired action for the subscriber to take after reading your email, then it’s vital for it to stand out. To achieve this, make sure the call to action is legible and large enough to draw attention.

Determining where to place your call to action has a big impact on engagement, Gallagher said. Using newspaper terminology, there are three options:

• Above the fold. On email, this call-to-action button placement is visible before the reader scrolls and is typically best for situations, such as breaking news or time-sensitive events, that require immediate action.
• Below the fold. This call-to-action button option requires the reader to scroll through the email to view the CTA, so is best when context is required before the CTA.
• In-line: This type of call to action includes text links embedded directly in the email’s body to provide additional information via related content. It can also be combined with either button location.

“Placing your calls to action is one of the most important things that impacts how often people are going to click, how quickly they're going to click on those buttons and links in your email,” Gallagher said. 

Aside from placement, other ways to help your call to action stand out include adjusting the size, color and shape, though McCarley urged consistency to avoid confusing the reader. For example, buttons with rounded corners tend to perform better.

“Design experts — a lot of them — prefer round buttons and say that they're more visually appealing,” she said. “There is some debate about that, but overall round seems to be a preference.”

Using an image for a button is an option, though McCarley cautioned that some email clients don’t download images, so this tactic could backfire. A best practice would be to include a text link as a backup in case the image button doesn’t load or the reader doesn’t realize it’s a link.

“I actually had someone send me an email recently where they designed a whole email in Canva … which I know is very common,” she said. “The problem is that not all email clients will download images. So when I opened the email, I saw nothing because it didn't download to my phone.”

2. Keep Your Call to Action Brief and Action-Oriented

Compelling copy results in engaged subscribers. However, if that compelling content is too lengthy, it could turn off the reader, especially if they’re viewing your email from their mobile device, McCarley noted. The same is true for your CTA.

To help maintain brevity and encourage action, start with an action word — for example, “Join now,” “RSVP today” and “Start today.” McCarley also recommended three or fewer words, but admitted some marketers prefer up to six words. The key is knowing you are competing with the reader’s time with longer phrases.

“None of us have enough time,” she said. “You have about seven seconds on average with someone looking at your emails. They take about an average of seven seconds to decide if they want to read the rest of your email. So the more words you have on the call to action, you're taking a chance with that. So just keep that in mind.”

However, the use of “Click here” is also no longer recommended. Not only is it outdated, but there are better ways to grab your readers’ attention. 

“So instead of saying ‘Click here to follow us,’ just say ‘Follow us,’” McCarley said. “It's shorter, takes less time to read, it's more straight to the point and tells the subscriber exactly what's going to happen when they click on that button.”

3. Segment Your Donors to Personalize Calls to Action

The more you know about your email list, the more direct you can make your calls to action. Segmentation can be based on their interests, demographics or past engagement with your emails, McCarley said. Sending more relevant information is more likely to lead to higher clickthrough rates and overall engagement. On the other hand, blindly sending irrelevant emails to your list could result in undesired outcomes.

“If they specifically said they are interested in becoming a volunteer but you're sending them information about fundraising, then you have a higher likelihood that they will stop opening the email, unsubscribe — all kinds of unwanted behavior,” she said.

Another way to segment your email list is to target those who have been inactive or unresponsive to your previous correspondence. The strategy for inactive subscribers who haven’t been opening your emails could be very different from the one you’d use for those who are engaged, McCarley noted. So it’s important to develop a unique strategy for this list.

“And at some point, which is different depending on your goals, you may want to consider actually purging them from your list if they've been inactive for a long period of time,” she said.

4. Test to Determine What Works Best for Your Email List

Whether it’s button color, shape, placement or something else, testing helps to determine which option your subscribers prefer.

“Maybe you send one email with a bright pink color, and then send another email in blue, and see which one performs better,” McCarley said. “All other things being equal, of course, but the button color is the only thing that changes.”

Testing over time is a great way to inform your strategy. McCarley shared her three top metrics:

• Clickthrough rate. The ratio of the number of clicks to the number of emails that were successfully delivered.
• Conversion rate. The percentage of recipients who complete the desired action in the email.
• Revenue attribution. The amount of revenue generated from the email.

“We always recommend using multiple metrics as part of your overall strategy,” McCarley said. “That means that there's really no one metric that can tell you the entire story. Clickthroughs are great, but they don't tell you everything that you need to know. Actually, none of them tell you everything, but they can help to build a stronger profile and give you clues as to the preferences of your audiences.”