Ep. 110- Call-To-Action SENTENCES?? (Whoa 22% Higher Clicks) and BOWL Haircuts! Ask Us ANYTHING

Welcome to do this, not that the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. Also dig into life, pop culture and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.

Welcome back to Ask Us Anything from Do this, not that. This is the short episode where all week long we get in work questions and we get in ridiculous questions that we try to answer.

And if you want to submit a question, it's real easy, you can go to jschwetelson.com.com podcast and there's a button that says ask us anything. You can put anything in work related, ridiculous related. We'll try to tackle it here.

And don't forget we have our longer episode at the end of the week where we share tactics, tips and stuff. So let's get into it. First. Let's do the work. Question we got a question in from Candace from Boston. One of my all time favorite cities is Boston.

You know what's great about Boston also is the movies that have taken place in Boston. Why is that always on my mind? What movies take place in a city? What's taking place in Boston? Let's see.

This was not the question, but Good Will Hunting, right? Oh, the town. Great movie with Ben Affleck, Departed. Great movie, Legally Blonde. I mean, come on. Great movie town.

Anyway, Candace, what is your question? Here it is, Jay. We've been debating internally about testing our call to action buttons in our emails and in our marketing.

Is there anything interesting we should be thinking about for our CTA or call to action button test? I love this because call to action buttons are the forgotten variable. They're the things that can radically change performance.

It costs you nothing to change things there.

And there's something new that's going on with call to action buttons that I think most marketers are not aware of, which I'm excited to share with you. Also. First off, what is a call to action button? It's real simple. It's also known as a cta. But that's the clickable button, right?

The long rectangular thing that's in an email or on a website or a social post that tells the user to take a specific action the button, right? Then CTAs are often written as a command or an action phrase, something like sign up or Buy now.

But there's two stats and the first one you may know of. But the second one, I doubt you do. That are a game changer for call to action buttons. So here's the first one.

Call to action buttons that are written in the first person have a 26% higher average click through rate. What does that mean, written in the first person? So let's say your button in your email, literally the word on your button.

And let's say you're promoting a webinar. That button may say the word register. That's like what 99% of webinar buttons say in email.

But instead of register, if you wrote and wrote save my spot, you're writing that in the first person, right? Or on the consumer side instead of buy now and that be the words on your button. It said the button said I want 20% off. Right?

If you write it in the first person, we see average click through rates rise by about 26% because it gets the person excited, it gets them involved in what they're about to click on. People make the mistake. They think a button has to be one or two words. And that's not true. A button could be really long.

It actually stands out if it's really long. And writing in the first person is the first stat. That's really interesting. But here is the second stat. That's wild. That's really new and different.

In the last 90 days, what we have seen in the last 90 days, we did this big test over hundreds of different campaigns and we did a test for sentence call to action buttons versus just phrase call to action buttons. Literally writing a sentence on the button as opposed to saying buy now or register, which is a phrase on the button.

Sentence call to action buttons have a 22% higher average click through rate in the last 90 days. What do I mean? Let me give you some examples of what I mean.

All right, so instead of buy now, you'd actually have a sentence on the button that said I want my comfy socks today, exclamation point. It's a full sentence. It stands out. Instead of register it would say I'm so excited, save my spot.

Instead of learn more, it might say I want to boost my energy in seven days. You're being descriptive about whatever your offer is. You're writing a short sentence and, and that is your call to action button.

And the button can either be really just one long button or the sentence can wrap around and it can be stacked on top of each other.

Or if let's say it's a free trial of something instead of the button saying free trial it could say I'm ready for my risk free 30 day trial cancel anytime. It can actually be that long and we're seeing a 22% higher average click through rate.

When your call to action buttons are sentences and not a single word or phrase, the secret sauce is you want to keep it under 12 words. That's what we found is kind of like the drop off point where performance starts to go into the garbage can.

So yeah, lots of cool tests that you could do with your CTAs. If you've never tried a sentence CTA, that is a fun new test.

All right, before we get into the ridiculous question, and as always, it is totally ridiculous, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. What is Marigold? Marigold is an email sending platform. It also does lots of other stuff. I use it to send out my agency emails.

We send out billions of emails. It is a phenomenal platform for small, medium and large companies and they have a free piece of content that you got to download.

I've been digesting this thing. I love it. It is the seven tips to reduce Spam complaints. Listen, spam complaints can hurt everything.

This thing is so valuable and in it it has seven actionable tips to reduce spam complaints immediately.

If you want to download this thing, all you got to do is go to J. Schweddelson.com Marigold that's my full name, jschweddelson.com Marigold and you could download the seven tips to reduce reduce Spam complaints. Marigold is awesome. All right, let's get on to the ridiculous question. We got a question in from Stephanie from San Francisco. Love San Francisco.

Don't drive a stick shift in San Francisco. All right, here's the question from Stephanie. All right, if you could attend any fictional high school from a movie or show, which one would it be?

And for example, we mean something like Hogwarts School from Harry Potter. Wow, that is a totally ridiculous question. All right, let me give some thought here.

What high school would I want to attend from any fictional high school? All right, let me first talk about ones I don't want to attend. Okay, I do not want to attend Hawkins High from Stranger Things.

Weird stuff goes on there. Okay, everyone first of all gets a bowl haircut. So that's one reason you wanted a Hawkins.

And then the other thing is they have this whole weird, crazy space alien thing going on. So I'm not going to Hawkins High. That's very, very scary. And it's in, in Indiana, which is Very cold. Sorry. I'm not gonna go to. What's the mean?

Girls High School. I'm not going to. Oh, North Shore High School.

I'm such a loser that I know that I'm not going to North Shore High School because Regina George scares me. I would have no idea what table to eat lunch at, and I'd wind up eating lunch by myself. So I'm not going there.

Also would not go to Rydell High from Greece from back in the 50s because Rydell High had the T birds and the Pink Ladies and the whole T bird thing was very cringy and I would not be a part of that. And Grease 2 is an underrated movie, so there's that. So where would I want to go? Riverdale. Huge Archie comic person. Okay. Love Archie comics.

Hang out with Jughead and Veronica and Betty and Moose and Midge and everybody. So all in on Riverdale. That would be cool. And then. Oh, I would probably. You know what? I'm torn right now.

So either West Beverly or the other one would be Sky High, because remember Sky High, the movie? Everyone had superpowers. If I was in Sky High, that means I would have a superpower, which would be pretty awesome. But I probably have a lame one.

Like, you know, I don't know, toes that had fire coming out of them or something weird. I don't know. Anyway, that was ridiculous. I appreciate you being here and I hope you check out the longer episode at the end of the week.

I hope you register for Guru Conference, the world's largest free virtual email marketing event. It is two days. We're going to run out of virtual spots. Guru conference.com I'm going to be there. It's going to be wild. Thanks for being here.

Leave this thing a review and what school would you go to? Let me know. All right, take it easy. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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