A call to action (CTA) is a statement designed to get an immediate response from the person reading or hearing it. It’s used in business as part of a marketing strategy to get your target market to respond through action. It’s generally used at the end, or sometimes throughout, a sales pitch (i.e. a sales letter) to let potential clients/customers know what to do next if they’re interested in what you offer.

Many new home business owners leave calls to action out of their marketing materials or sales pitches usually for one of two reasons:

1. belief that the prospect already knows what to do if they’re interested in learning more, or

2. concerns that calls to action are obnoxious.

Whatever the reason, leaving CTAs out can mean losing money. Calls to action are essential in directing a prospect to the next step of the sales funnel or process.

What are Calls to Action Used In?

The most obvious uses for a call to action is in sales, such as “Buy now!” However, the sales process isn’t the only place a call to action can be helpful. Especially if you have a high priced item or service, in which it can take time to encourage someone to buy, a call to action that acts like a road map toward sales can be helpful. For example, “Call now for a free estimate.”

A call to action can be used to build your email list (“Sign up for a free report now”), increase your social media following (“Get more tips and coupons by following us on Facebook!), keep readers on your site (“Click here to read more about…”) and much more.

Typical Call to Action Phrases

Call to action phrases use action verbs, like:

• Sign-Up
• Register
• Call
• Subscribe
• Donate
• Buy
• Order
• Share
• Follow
• Download
• Click here for

One useful technique to get people to take action immediately is to add a sense of urgency and the fear of missing out. For example:

• Offer expires on Halloween.
• Limited time offer.
• Act now before supplies run out.
• Respond before July 30th to enroll at this special price.

Creating a Call to Action

It is important for a businesses not to assume that the target audience automatically knows what is expected of them. You’ll get greater results by being clear about what the prospect needs to do. Make sure each page of your website, each sales conversation, and every piece of printed material (i.e. direct mail or brochures) contains a clearly defined and easily identifiable call to action. For ideas, check out established businesses marketing materials and websites to see how they convey their call to action.

Calls to action work best when they’re not complicated. Don’t make your potential clients and customers go through a maze or jump through hoops. While offering option (i.e. “Call or email us”) is good, don’t give them so many options or make it difficult for them to follow through on what you want them to do.

Finally, have an end goal for each call to action and how that call to action may fit with other parts of your marketing plan or get them into your sales funnel. For example, you may have a call to action to get a freebie by signing up for your email list, which is the initial goal.

But perhaps you use that email list to send sales letters with a call to action to “Buy now.” The email subscription is the first step in the ultimate goal of a sale.

Here are some tips to creating an effective call to action:

• Clearly explain what the customer needs to do to respond (i.e. Subscribe here)
• Clearly state what the customer will get by responding (i.e. Free report on how to save $100 a week)
• Focus on benefits of taking action (i.e. save money now)
• Offer a compelling reason for the customer to respond now or by the deadline.(i.e. this report is free only for the next 24 hours)

When doing a printed piece or designing a website or email marketing campaign, it is suggested to differentiate the call to action by making it bigger, using a different color, and outlining it with extra white space.

Don’t let it get lost in the rest of the marketing piece or content.

Sample Call to Action 

• Free Gift: The first 100 people will receive a free gift. Order now before all the gifts are gone!
• Free Trial: Sign-up by November 30th to take advantage of our 60-day free trial.
• Price Increase: Our prices are going up on January 1st. Come in today to take advantage of lower pricing.
• Automatic Upgrade: If you order within the next 30 days, receive an automatic upgrade to the premium package.
• Discount Deadline: Order by the end of the week to receive 10% off.
• Sale Incentives: We are overstocked! This Wednesday only, attend our liquidation blow-out event for deep discounts.

Track Results

Like many other marketing strategies, testing different options insures you’re getting maximum results. The same is true with calls to action. For example, do you get more email sign ups with “Subscribe Now” or “Get Your Free Report Now?” Test out a variety of options, switching them out one a time and then checking to see if one leads to more responses and sales than another.

Marketers and business owners who are seeking information on email marketing best practices often ask the same general questions. One of the most common is, “How often should I send?”

It’s an interesting question that has so many answers (check out this Ask Me About Email Marketing podcast episode to listen to a discussion on the topic). The answer that’s most commonly given is that it depends on your subscribers.

While there’s some truth to this, there are three basic guidelines that you can apply to just about any email marketing campaign in order to approach send frequency more strategically.

Those three guidelines are:

• stop over sending emails
• experiment with segmentation
• and monitor your results

Stop Over Sending Emails

If you’re sending marketing messages to your email subscribers more than once a day, stop it – now. For marketing purposes, daily sending is acceptable in few circumstances, but I have yet to come across a campaign where sending multiple times a day is acceptable. If you are sending more than once a day for any of your campaigns, serious thought needs to be put into whether it’s truly necessary. Should you be sending fewer emails?

Sending too much is a sign of someone anxious for site traffic. Here’s a tip: shift the focus. Change that focus to driving sales instead of traffic. Enticing subscribers with offers on a weekly basis that they will be more likely to buy can yield better results than a daily email extravaganza with little change from day to day and, therefore, little value.

Experiment with Segmentation

If changing your email frequency sounds pretty scary, there are ways you can experiment while keeping the core of your campaign intact. One of those is breaking the list apart. That’s right, take a chisel to it and make it into two to three specialized lists instead of one large all-or-nothing list.

There are likely some users on your list who are constantly engaging with your emails; possibly even your daily emails. If that is the case, break them off into their own segment. This new segment is your highly engaged list, treat them special.

Everyone else gets moved into your standard list. An option for this segment of your audience would be a split test. Try sending two to three messages a week to one half and just once a week to the other half. The point is to experiment and keep a watchful eye on what’s getting your desired results.

Monitor Your Results

I promise you that sending too often will cause subscriber churn. If the subscribers don’t unsubscribe themselves, their email client will take care of it for you by filtering your messages into the junk folder. Also, just about every frequent sender I meet asks why their opens are so low. The simple answer is that they’re likely getting filtered out of the main inbox due to poor engagement.

Sending less emails opens many doors for providing better content and more value to your audience. Think of it this way: a retail shop wouldn’t offer 20% off coupons every day to its customers.

But offering it once every month would likely yield better returns. With email marketing, this translates to better returns on just a single email.

When senders choose to mail less frequently and have a more targeted campaign, their engagement metrics and results rise. If results haven’t changed or they are worse (hopefully not), try something new.

Whatever way you decide to alter your sending frequency, the key is reading the results. Again, don’t fret so much on the amount of site traffic you’re getting. Instead, point a laser focus on increasing engagement and/or sales.

There is no magic number for how many messages to send in an email marketing campaign, but there is a rhythm for every campaign. The challenge–and fun part–is finding the rhythm through experimentation.

Less Is More

Customers and subscribers are reaching a breaking point with managing the flood of emails in their inboxes while marketers are sending more and more emails. It’s a vicious cycle. But remember, oftentimes with email marketing, less is more. A well treated email campaign is usually highly engaged and performs better than a campaign that gets emailed the same thing on a daily basis. Avoid the really bad practices, experiment with segments and different email frequencies, then compare your results.

Anyone interested in selling products online might find the prospect of designing a website storefront with a shopping cart and credit card processing intimidating. At one time, creating an online store required programming knowledge and lots of money. But today, there are many easy to use and affordable, full service ecommerce providers perfect for the small or home-based business.

Not sure what to expect from an ecommerce software provider? For the most part, providers offer shopping cart solutions for your new or existing web site, allowing you to easily build, edit, and maintain your online shop, and collect orders without any programming or HTML knowledge.

Most providers offer everything you need, including hosting, templates and more. Or, you can integrate them into your existing website. Most of these offer payment gateways and use of their credit card services, as well as allow you to use PayPal. Some charge transaction or set-up fees and others don’t. They all offer a free trial, which gives you the chance to test them all to find the one that best suits your needs.

1. Volusion

Volusion is my top recommendation, not only for the low price, but all the bells and whistles that come along with its affordability. There is ample support, fraud protection for your customers, options for credit card processing as well as accepting PayPal payments, and many website templates to choose from. Further, it offers responsive design, mobile ecommerce and social media integration (i.e. Facebook store). Basically, Volusion offers everything you could want or need to run a successful and effective ecommerce store. Volution offers many plans starting at only $14 per month (you can test it with a free 14-day trial).

The lowest cost plan features:

• $14 per mo (free 14 day trial)
• 100 Products
• Unlimited Storage
• No Transaction Fees
• 1GB Bandwidth
• Online Support
• Mobile Commerce
• Responsive Templates
• Free Slideshow
• Mobile App
• Facebook Store
• Social Media Tools
• Automatic Tax Rates
• And more

2. Shopify

Shopify is also another top recommendation because it is so customizable. Within the typical ecommerce solution and hosting, there is a Shopify App store (much like Apple’s) which allows you to shop for and select add-on applications for your Shopify site. For example, Shopify offers buy buttons for Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook. It provides everything you need or you can integrate into your existing website or store. It offers mobile options as well. In addition, you get great support, fraud protection, options for credit card processing and many website templates to choose from.

Plans start at $29 per month but that includes unlimited products and 24/7 support.

• Starts at $29 per mo
• Free trial
• Unlimited products
• 24/7 Support
• Discount codes
• Website/Blog
• 100+ themes
• Mobile commerce
• Social media integration
• Email marketing
• and more.

3. Big Commerce

Big Commerce is another well-priced and fully stocked ecommerce service provider. It offers fraud protection, varying credit card processing features and a wide selection of website design themes, including responsive design, and mobile ecommerce. It also offers a wide range of support options and the ability to show product images in varying ways. Big Commerce offers unlimited products, storage and bandwidth, and the ability to sell on Pinterest and Facebook, as well as Google Stores on the bigger, Pro and Enterprise plans.

The least expensive plan features:

• $29.95 per month (15 day free trial)
• Unlimited products
• Sales up to $50k per year
• 24.7 live agent support
• 100+ design templates
• Social media connectivity
• Mobile ecommerce
• And more

4. 3DCart

3Dcart is an ecommerce solution targeting those who wish to sell a larger amount of products. It includes many of the bells and whistles as the other providers such as mobile ecommerce, social media integration and more.

The Mini Plan offers:

• $19.99 per month (you can test with a free trial)
• 200 products
• Up to 4000 visits a month
• $25 in free ad credits
• Social media connectivity
• No transaction fees
• 24/7 tech support

5. Fortune3

Like other providers, Fortune3 offers everything you’d need to set up an ecommerce store with six plans to choose from starting at $9.95 a month. A few other providers offer gift cards, and Fortune3 give you the ability to sell and accept gift certificates. Plus there is Facebook shopping integration, email marketing, and the ability to create an affiliate program. What’s different from other providers, is that Fortune# includes all features in all plans. The difference between the plans is the number of products. The two most expensive plans have set up fees as well.

The Starter plan features:

• $9.95 per month (30-day free trial)
• 20 products
• Unlimited support
• No Set-up Fee
• Unlimited storage and bandwidth
• No transaction fee when you use Fortune3 credit card services