Let me be clear

I hate the phrase, “Let me be clear.”

It’s a beloved phrase by politicians everywhere and what follows is always the most unclear statement ever.

When someone says, “Let me be clear” you inevitably walk away with less clarity than you had before they said whatever they said.

BUT!

I’m not a politician. And if I may, I ask humbly, that you heed my call for clarity in your emails.

Here’s what I mean by that.

Recently, a client asked us to build an email. They had an outline and some calls to action (CTA) we should follow.

No problem. Pretty standard.

Except one thing…

The CTA didn’t match the landing page.

The CTA was to “Start your free trial” and the landing page the contact was brought to asked them to download an app.

So what is it?

a) Start a free trial
b) Download an app

“But the free trial comes when you download the app for the first time!”

Okay, no problem. But there wasn’t anything in the copy that mentioned this. If we knew that, we’d have structured the copy and the CTAs around downloading the app to start your free trial.

… And we would’ve included information about the app itself.

But nowhere in the brief was there mention of an app.

You can see how confusing this would be for someone reading an email, right?

This is where clarity comes in.

Your emails should be leading your contacts down a funnel and prepping them to complete a single action.

Like this:

From the subject line to the final action that makes your business some Pesos, every step should be constructed with absolute clarity.

My old boss used to say something to the effect of:

“Unlike real life, we want to be told exactly what to do when we’re online and those instructions must be clear.”

I burned that wisdom into my memory because without it, as marketers and digital entrepreneurs, we’re lost… And so are our customers who want their hand held when navigating things online.

So, with that, go through these funnels yourself. Better yet, have someone who has little to no context go through these funnels and see if they can navigate them simply.

At the very least, make sure your CTAs match the action you want your contacts to perform on your landing page.

Adios,
Andrew