You’ve spent the last three days writing the perfect email. It’s warm, thoughtful, filled with stats and emotion. Your subject line sings. Your opening paragraph? Chef’s kiss. 

And when the reader makes it to the bottom of your masterpiece…

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE

Learn more what?

[DELETE]

You’ve Got One Shot

Welcome to the graveyard of well-intentioned nonprofit communications, where beautiful stories go to die at the hands of a vague, soft, or downright confusing call-to-action (CTA).

Let’s talk about why you’re struggling to turn that 70% open rate into more donors, clients, or advocates. Because you only get one shot. And your CTA? That was it.

What are We Even Talking About?

OK, so you might not be marketing-savvy, and that’s just fine. You may have inherited marketing tasks, like managing your nonprofit’s website, social media accounts, and newsletter—even though your actual job description is in program management. 

[Read: Welcome to Your Nonprofit Career!]

A call-to-action is exactly what it sounds like: it’s what you want your audience to do. Because you’re not just writing this newsletter for the sake of it (Right? Please tell me you’re not just doing it because that seems like something people do…). You’re doing it to get people more involved in your work, to generate fundraising leads, to recruit clients. So whenever you send out a message, whatever form it takes, you want it to be pushing readers toward a desired outcome. That’s a CTA.

Some call-to-action types:

• Donate (fundraising)
• Purchase this product (sales)
• Sign up for our newsletter/text alerts/updates (lead generation, engagement)
• Follow our social media profiles (engagement)
• Volunteer/attend our events (participation)
• Get help (client acquisition)

Your Audience is Not Your Friends

It’s easy to believe that anyone who signs up for your mailing list or subscribes to your social media feeds is ready to give, volunteer, apply for a job, or enroll in one of your programs. Your reader is not lovingly reading every line of your message, sipping tea and marveling at your mastery of nonprofit narrative. They’re skimming. They’re probably reading it on their phone, half-distracted. They’re deciding whether to keep reading or tap on that Instagram banner notification.

Here’s what you need to remember above all else: You’re not just fighting for attention. You’re fighting for action. There will be attrition at every stage. Some percentage of your readers will exit at every click, every paragraph break (my sincere thanks to the 19% who have made it this far).

And after all that storytelling, if your CTA is an afterthought, guess what? So is their response.

What’s the Point?

Your CTA is not just “something at the end.” It’s not automatic. Your readers won’t click on it instinctively. 

It’s the entire point of your message. It’s what you want people to do—and you better tell them like you mean it. There’s a reason marketers use the terms conversion and acquisition for the standard outcomes of a CTA. A certain amount of coercion is required. You are convincing the reader to do something they hadn’t planned, to change their mind about something, to take action, to spend money they earned on something not for themselves. 

Use These Methods for Better Conversion

How’d you like that second-person POV, “you” understood sentence? I was talking to the reader, to you, and telling you what I want you to do next.

That’s to write better CTA’s.

Here are a few ways you can do that…

Be clear and confident. Don’t tiptoe around it. No riddles, no euphemisms. Tell your story, make your case, encourage action. Let your call to action feel like a firm hand on your reader’s back, urging them to trust you and take the next step. If that hand is shaking, they’re going to sense it and back off. 

Know your audience. Don’t pitch the idea of a $500 monthly donation on TikTok. Context matters. Examine your follower stats, see who’s interacting with your content the most, and tailor your CTA to match.

Use verbs. Action verbs. You want them to do something.

Add urgency. Think about those NPR quarterly campaigns. They set hourly targets, constantly reminding you that they’re trying to raise X dollars by 3:00 p.m., or they’re 13 donors shy of their goal for this hour. There’s a huge difference between donate and give now. 

Get from Meh to Motivating

Do away with meh calls-to-action like Click Here, and Learn More. A quick list of some CTAs that factor the advice offered above.

• Donate $10 to give 5 books to children in need.
• Find out how you can protect local wetlands.
• See how your donation will keep families warm this winter.
• Plant 10 trees with a $20 gift.
• Join our volunteer team at the animal shelter this Saturday.
• Sponsor one student’s school supplies for just $20.
• Be a hero—find out how your matching gift can help us build a new outdoor classroom.
• Become a monthly sponsor and empower women entrepreneurs in your community.
• See what your support helped us accomplish last year.
• Sign our public letter to lawmakers, encouraging them to protect our unions in the upcoming legislative session.

The meh examples can each fit on a button. That’s how you’re seeing others use them, so that’s probably how you are using them, figuring that the pretty brand-colored button is enough to draw the reader into action. But I want you to treat those buttons as mechanisms to enable the action you’re calling for, not the CTA itself. The CTA should be the natural conclusion of the storytelling, have that audience-focused specificity and urgency. Your “Be a Hero” button is just how they do it. But please, please, please don’t use Click Here or Learn More ever again. 

Bonus Hot Take: Those Pop-Ups Aren’t Doing What You Want Them To

Strong CTA good. Aggressive CTA bad. If the reader is getting cookie policy consent popups and screen-freezing CTAs asking them to offer up their email and phone number and enter texted confirmation codes before they’ve even gotten through your first paragraph… good chance they’re gone.

The common justification is we’re going to capture at least some email addresses, then we can market to them forever. That’s not wrong, it’s just a carryover from for-profit sales tactics. But you’re not selling a vacuum cleaner to someone who’s going to buy one somewhere eventually. If you’re in nonprofit comms, your CTA is usually counting on some degree of generosity. That generosity gets stretched when it feels like it comes with half a dozen strings attached and digital privacy concerns.

Have you ever looked at the bounce rates or the time-on-page stats for your website? Not a ton of users are sticking around longer than a minute, because that’s about how much time it takes to confirm whether the site they’re visiting aligns with their interests. So if you’re going to use the pop-up method, try to delay it 60-90 seconds at least so that your reader is able to engage with your content before the ask. That obvious CTA (be it a newsletter signup or a link to a specific fundraising campaign) will come across as a nudge, rather than an annoyance.

A Call-To-Action… for This Article

Send me your latest CTA, and I’ll give you honest, no-strings-attached feedback on it.