Alchemy Worx In promotional messages, the call-to-action (CTA) can make or break the campaign results, so marketers are keen to find the perfect combination of its positioning, color, size, style and wording to optimize conversions. In this test, we chose to test wording – specifically the hypothesis that giving the impression of an ultimatum would be more likely to elicit a response.

We decided to test giving prospective Touchstone users an ultimatum: either sign-up or tell us you want to stop hearing about it. We hoped to elicit a response one way or another and also wanted to see whether framing a “sign up” call-to-action alongside a “miss out” CTA would tip the scales towards more sign-ups. Here’s what we found…

Results

Overall, the versions with the dual-CTA yielded 29% more total clicks than the single-CTA versions. Looking at just the sign-up button clicks as a percentage of opens, there was an 11% lift on the sign-up button when it was presented alongside the ‘not interested’ CTA.

We had a definitive answer on three out of four campaigns. The one that didn’t yield the same result had a small audience of people who had not opened the previous two emails, so not only was this result not statistically very significant, it also doesn’t represent our audience of people most likely to engage. What’s next?

Following a fairly conclusive result, we’ll continue to use this dual-CTA technique and we’ll keep you posted on findings from further tweaks.