How to get a 28% increase in your email click-through rate using buttons

Are you unhappy with the click-through rates of your email campaigns?

You’re writing great copy and using beautiful images, but for some reason your click-through rates are lower than you’d like them to be.

The problem could be the calls to action you’re using.

In this post, we’ll share with you how we got a 28% increase in click-throughs by adding buttons to our email campaigns, and how you can too.

Do buttons increase click-through rates?

At Campaign Monitor, we think about these kinds of questions all the time.

Fortunately, our product has a super easy A/B testing feature that allows you to create multiple variations of a campaign, send them to your list, and measure the results.

So we decided to test using a link vs. a button as the main call to action in one of our recent campaigns, to figure out once and for all which works best.

Here’s the version of our email with the link as the call to action at the bottom:

And here’s the version of our email with the button as the call to action at the bottom:

The result? Using a call to action button instead of just a text link got us a 28% increase in click-throughs.

Just to be sure, we tested it again on a few different campaigns and got a similar increase in click-throughs each time.

We’ve also seen other results that further support the effectiveness of buttons over linked text. For instance, we received a 127% increase in click-throughs when we redesigned our blog subscribers email a few months ago, and the addition of a button over a text link was a significant contributor to this.

Overall, the verdict is that using buttons in your email campaigns can help increase your click-through rate.

Why buttons increase click-through rates

But why do buttons increase email click-through rates? Both the button and the link have the same copy and offer the same end result, so why such a big difference?

Research shows most people scan email campaigns rather than reading them word-for-word, and while linked text is easy to miss when you’re quickly scanning an email campaign, buttons stand out in the email and help your call to action get noticed.

This is because buttons have a number of unique attributes linked text doesn’t, including:

• Size – Often times a button will be much larger in size than a linked piece of text, catching the skimmer’s eye.
• Design – Buttons often have design elements that links don’t, such as shadows, gradients and other effects. This can make them ‘pop’ off the page and stand out to skimmers.
• Color – Often buttons will have a different color to the background and text, and this contrast draws the eye and makes the reader notice them more.
• Whitespace – When a button is set away from other elements in the email, the whitespace around it creates an area free from distraction – leading the reader right to it.

Using a button for your call to action draws significantly more attention to it, making it easier for a reader to take your desired conversion action and ultimately increasing the chances they’ll do so.

How to add buttons to your email marketing campaigns

Now that it’s clear call to action buttons can help improve your conversion rates, it’s time to incorporate some into an email campaign of your own. Unfortunately, many email clients opt to block images by default so creating your button as an image isn’t the best idea.

So how do you add buttons to your email campaigns?

If you’re a Campaign Monitor customer, you can easily add beautiful buttons that work across all devices and by simply dragging and dropping the button wherever you need it.

Alternatively, if you’re not a Campaign Monitor customer you can use our Bulletproof Button Tool to create customised buttons that will work across all devices. You simply select the options you want, enter the text for your button and then copy and paste the code into whatever email tool you are using.

In conclusion

It’s clear from our testing that using buttons for your calls to action can help increase the click-through rate of your email campaigns.

And fortunately for marketers like you, tools like Campaign Monitor make it really easy to add buttons to your campaigns. You simply drag and drop the button into your email, and you can even the change the fonts and colors to match your brand.

So when creating your next campaign, test using a link vs. a button and see what difference it makes. You might just get that increase in click-through rate you were looking for.