Email newsletters are among the most effective and affordable methods of educating, building rapport with and establishing credibility among customers and prospects. So does that mean it can’t double as a powerful lead-generation tool? Absolutely not!

While it’s best to avoid packing your eNewsletter articles with self-promotional sales pitches that may overpower the newsletter’s educational value, it is email marketing sabotage not to incorporate strong calls to action throughout an eNewsletter’s content. Include three or more calls to action in your campaigns. Calls to action accomplish a lot:

• open the door for two-way communication by inviting readers to react and respond to the content you deliver.
• engage customers by giving them a reason to act.
• elicit the desired response you want from readers through clear and direct requests for action.

Call with care
As important as calls to action are, they shouldn’t be arbitrarily scattered throughout an eNewsletter. Rather, they need to be carefully crafted and strategically placed to fit with the context of an eNewsletter’s content.

Tamara Gielen explains, “Basically, in an email message, the call to action has three elements: the action you want the reader to take, the words you use to issue the call, and its physical appearance (text, image, location).”

A good call to action

• is relevant to and aligns with the overall objective and purpose of the eNewsletter;
• is easily visible to readers;
• is clear and concise so that readers know exactly what you’re asking them to do;
• offers readers something of value — a discount, a free trial, access to a white paper or anything that readers can only get by responding; and
• has a sense of urgency that gets readers to respond sooner rather than later.

Clearly, there’s a lot to think about when creating calls to action, but they are imperative to turning an eNewsletter into a vehicle for two-way communication.

Bottom line: If you’re not using strong calls to action in your email marketing, you’re losing leads.