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Anytime you send a newsletter, you hope that an audience will take an action of some kind, whether that is opening the newsletter, visiting your website, reading your latest post, buying something, or what have you. To do that effectively, you need a call to action.

“What is a call to action?”
A call to action is a term marketers throw around a lot. It’s basically a fancy way of saying “what you want people to do next”. You’re calling upon your reader to act.

“How do I do that?”
First determine the goal of your email. Are you emailing because you do every month? Next, what you want someone to do or take away from your message?  Some messages do not have a next step in mind. This is a missed opportunity to take advantage of your captive and loyal audience.  If you don’t have one, try having a flash sale for email readers.

If your email newsletter has a call to action somewhere within it, the reader may not be pick up on it if it is subtle, or buried within other messages. In an email, an effective call to action should have a few components:
A clear message. What is the next step? The best calls to action are easy to spot within the first few seconds of opening a newsletter. Email campaigns that surround a call to action with other messages usually do not live up to their full potential.

A Reason. Why they should take the next step. People are not reading your emails to do you a personal favor; they usually expect something out of it. Meet that expectation by explaining the value of that step.

A link. How they will take that next step. A well-placed link is usually all it takes to prompt that next step if they are interested. It can be a linked image of a product you’re selling, a button to your social media page, an in-text link to a blog post, or something else. Just give them the tools to get where you want them to go.

A call to action is not difficult to achieve. Once you’ve got the basic elements in place, it becomes a matter of determining which calls to action work best for your email campaigns. Marketing without a call to action, on the other hand, presents a wasted opportunity and can lead to readers losing interest in your campaigns.