Every email campaign needs a poet and a practitioner. The poet is the wordsmith and editor, who makes sure the email is relevant, that there’s no junk or bad content, and that the writing is interesting, relevant and good. The practitioner applies best practices of HTML newsletter development, deliverability rules and coding tactics. Hopefully poet and practitioner get along well and the email marries their crafts successfully. The poet and the practitioner do sometimes argue, especially about those “click here” links. The poet says they’re redundant. The practitioner says they work. Well, they’re both right. So, creating the best email newsletter will use those “click” words without added redundancy.

A Marketing Sherpa test performed with their newsletter readers found that the word “click” in hyperlinks increased clickthroughs by as much as 9% (“Click to continue”) while words like “read” can have the opposite effect, reducing clickthroughs by nearly 2% (“Read more.”)

Weep not, poets of email creative.

1. Okay, the word “click” works. So use it. And try not to be repetitive or redundant.
2. People click on the the top link, the biggest link, the bulletproof link, the link that corresponds to an engaging image, the link that is specific and has the most benefit for the user, the link that is on the right side of an email and, perhaps most importantly, the link that is in the preview pane. So, a link with the word “click” in it will work, but there are a lot of other elements that lead users to click and thus increase your clickthroughs and engagement.
3. Strunk & White Elements of Style: “Use definite, specific, concrete language” (Rule #16).
4. The Marketing Sherpa study suggests that people don’t like the word “read.” But we don’t know if they’re likely to click on “view full report” or “donate now” or other good, specific link descriptions. It’s our guess that the more specific and relevant links will prevail.

So, putting it together: We recommend actionable links and specific, language, but we don’t necessarily use the two words “click here.”

Tags: click here, content, copywriting, deliverability, links, offer