Alright, you finished up your email, now it’s time to add the final point, your CTA. Maybe you are here thinking should it be a specific time to meet, give them your Calendly, or perhaps send them a link to a case study?
The answer to get the maximum conversions from your cold emails might surprise you.
Types of CTA
So first of all before jumping into the winning CTA let’s go over the “type” of CTAs you can use in your emails.
We are referencing GONG on a lot of the data, which we also saw to be accurate while comparing across 22 million+ emails we sent for the last 12 months
Specific CTA
A specific CTA is a call to action that is clear and tells the recipient exactly what you want them to do.
Here are some examples of specific CTAs:
-Open to chatting further at Monday 9 or 10 am PST?
-Interested in a free {{service}} audit?
Open-ended CTA
Asks for something actionable but open-ended, instead of asking it like a “Specific CTA” for a meeting Wednesday at 11 am, we could ask them, what time works best for you this week?
Here are some examples of open-ended CTAs:
-Who should i get in touch with?
-Open to learning more?
Interest CTA
An interest CTA is a call to action that is designed to gauge the recipient’s level of interest in your product or service.
Here are some examples of interest CTA’s:
-Worth a chat?
-Interested in doing something similar for {{company}}?
So which type of CTA is the highest performer?
(Data taken from Gong)
The interest CTA.
Keep in mind the above is specifically for cold emails. When a prospect responds to your email or they are further along the sales cycle. The data changes:
(Data taken from Gong)
When a prospect responds to your email, it’s then best to add a CTA for booking a meeting at a specific time (and your booking link as an alternative in case those times don’t work for them).
Golden Rules for CTAs
Want to get the most replies?
Make sure you have one CTA per email, keep it clear, keep it short:
1. One CTA per email
Don’t have more than 1 CTA in your email. Having your email flooded with several call to actions increases the probability of your recipient NOT answering. Your target customers are busy, the faster they can glance at the email and figure out if it’s a YES, a NO or a Maybe for them, the more likely it is for them to respond.
(Data taken from Lemlist)
2. Keep it clear
Your CTA should be easily read, so make sure it’s spaced out from the rest of the email. Consider also how it might look on different devices like desktop and mobile.
3. Keep it short
A CTA should not be long, our top performers have been between 1-8 words. There are some exclusions but in general we suggest to keep it that lenght to land more responses, but don’t be afraid to AB test.
Our Top Performing CTAs
Let’s go over some of our top performing CTAs.
1. Worth a chat?
-It’s less than 4 words, so really easy to read.
-We are not asking directly for anything, just gauging their interest.
2. Interested in doing something similar for {{company}}?
This one is a bit harder to visualize, so here is how it might look in an email:
We helped Hypergen save 30% on their ad spend. Interested in doing something similar for {{company}}?
– After providing the end results the reader’s mind is thinking “What if?” they take a meeting to see if they can implement your solution to get the same results.
–This works even better if the case study is relevant to the prospect. Eg. you are reaching out to SEO marketing agencies and you mention what you did for a competitor of theirs.
3. Interested in using {{product}} to save each developer 6-8 hours per week?
-¨6-8 hours¨ makes the benefit easier to understand for the recipient by providing something measurable, which in this case is saving time.
4. Who should I get in touch with?
-We tend to use this one in the follow ups more, past the 2nd email, it’s a good way to find the right decision maker, especially if we are unsure initially.
-It’s easy for a prospect to respond to it, sometimes you will get folks even referring the right person directly in the email.
5. Interested in learning more? / Open to learning more?
-This is another variant of “Worth a chat?”, the great thing is it’s even less commitment since we are just gauging interest.
-It presents a low-risk option for the recipient, as it doesn’t require them to make a significant decision or commitment immediately.
6. Think this could help your team?
This one is great, we got it from Lemlist.
Buongiorno {{Firstname}},
I saw you’re running ads on Facebook, I assume you’re looking to secure new patients as the team continues to grow
Not sure what your experience with advertising is so far, what we hear from most clinic owners is ads aren’t profitable anymore.
Our experience is quite the opposite. As an agency, we’ve helped +50 clinics get +100 qualified leads every month with instant forms (a specific type of ad).
Think this could help your team?
-It’s gauging their interest and as we saw from the data interest based CTAs tend to work well.
7. Do not hesitate to reach out if your circumstances change in the future!
-It might be hard to believe but we’ve gotten leads that we thought were lost a few months later by closing our sequence like this.
-Don’t get discouraged when a lead is not responsive or seems interested, their circumstances might change, they can even change job and you will be of value to them.
8. Interested in a free {{service}} audit? / eg: Interested in a free employer brand audit?
-Offering a free audit on your service is one of the easiest ways to 2-3x your responses since people love free value upfront.
-Who would decline a free brand audit, it’s like turning down a freee sample at Costco.
9. Open to chatting further Monday at 9 or 10 am PST?
-It’s short and concise and ask the prospect if they are available to meet XYZ time.
-We use these in some of our follow-ups. As the study above doesn’t mention, though you get fewer conversions on it some prospects react better to a direct CTA.
-Bonus tip – change the timezone based on the prospect’s location.
More CTAs to Try Out
We also wanted to give you 30+ CTA’s that we also know work great.
We haven’t tested all of them but can confirm they follow best practices and are worth trying out!
Specific CTAs
- Could you refer me to whoever at {{company}} would be interested?
- Could you advise me whoever at {{company}} would be interested?
- Let me know who I should get in touch with.
- Let me know the person I should reach out to.
- Let me know the right person to get in touch with.
- Want more info?
- Looking for more info?
- Interested in learning more?
- Let me know if you’re interested in learning more.
- Could you advise me whoever at {{company}} would be interested?
- Seeking more details?
- Open to doing something similar for {{company}}?
- Interested in trying this out for {{company}}?
Interest CTAs
- Interested in discussing this for {{company}}?
- Worth discussing for {{company}}?
- Interested in trying out for {{company}}?
- Interested in more details for {{company}}?
- Interested in doing something similar for {{company}}?
- Open to doing something similar for {{company}}?
- Interested in trying this out for {{company}}?l
- Are you interested in learning more?
- Do you want to discuss those together?
- How about we go over those together?
- Interested in going over those together?
- Would you like to review those together?
- How about we go over those together?
Open-ended CTA
- Open to learning more?
- Would you be interested in learning more?
- Are you open to learning more about this?
- Would you like to know more?
- Are you curious to learn more?
- Want to know more?
- Are you interested in learning more?
- Do you desire further information?
- Are you curious to find out more?
- Would you like me to elaborate further?
- Do you want to discuss those together?
- Could you refer me to whoever at {{company}} would be interested?
- Could you advise me whoever at {{company}} would be interested?
- Open to doing something similar for {{company}}?
- Interested in trying this out for {{company}}?
- Let me know if you might consider this anytime soon!
- If you could, please inform me if this is something you might consider in the near future.
- Please inform me if there’s a possibility of considering this in the near future.
Too much of a hassle to apply all this knowledge to your own cold email campaigns? No worries we got you, grab a time with us here to chat, and let’s go over your goals and target ICP together:
Psst 😉 book a meeting with us.
