Hyperlink

A hyperlink within a document, web page, or email links to another location. This location can be within the same document, a different web page, or a section further down the same web page (called an anchor link). A hyperlink can appear as underlined text in a color other than black (often blue) or an image, and it assists the user in navigating a site or document to find additional relevant information.

You’ll often see hyperlinks used in marketing emails to signify a call to action (or CTA). What is a CTA? A CTA is the next step you’re meant to take after reading an email. This step might be: browsing a sale, tracking a shipment, reading a blog post, or any number of other actions subscribers can take.

While we often see hyperlinked CTAs, this is actually not the best method to attract engagement and clicks. For email marketers who want to encourage more clicks on their CTAs, we advise using a button instead of a hyperlink. In fact, when we did a study several years ago, we found that using a call-to-action button instead of a text link garnered a 28% increase in click-throughs. You can easily add a button to your emails with Campaign Monitor templates.

However, hyperlinks are still useful in emails for affiliate links, further reading, and citing sources. If, for instance, you have a long weekly or monthly email newsletter, chances are you’ll have a lot of great information within that email. You might tell readers what you’re watching or listening to, or where to find more information on something you discussed in the newsletter.

You might want to give subscribers this information while still offering a CTA that brings them to your site. To do this, simply add some hyperlinks into the newsletter. That way, you can easily improve user experience while still making your CTA the brightest and boldest part of your email send.