What Are Email Buttons and How to Add Them to Your Campaigns

What is an email button?

An email button is a CTA button on your email that tells users what to do next. When someone opens your email, they're presented with various content. However, the main goal of your email marketing campaign is to bring customers back to your website to take action. For example, an e-commerce business may promote a certain product to increase sales via a targeted email campaign.

There are a few different ways to create an email button, including those with background images and different font sizes and weights. One of the most popular types of email buttons is the bulletproof button.

Unlike buttons built with images, they're built with HTML and CSS code, allowing the button to be displayed in various email clients. The most significant benefit of bulletproof buttons is that they appear in emails even when the images are turned off. Bulletproof buttons are crucial for creating bulletproof emails that can increase clicks and engagement in your email marketing campaigns.

Even though these buttons are coded, you can edit the HTML template to update the font size or font weight, background image, and colors to create truly unique bulletproof HTML email buttons.

In addition to displaying in all clients even when the images are turned off, HTML buttons load faster, making your email more effective because users will see your CTA and know what to do next. But, of course, HTML email buttons are less unique than image-based buttons because you can't design your button in design tools like Photoshop or Canva.

Benefits of using email buttons in your campaigns

Whether using image-based or bulletproof HTML email buttons, the most significant advantage is increasing your ROI and CTR. Email buttons encourage subscribers to take action, allowing you to highlight your CTA to attract more attention.

Users won't take action if your email doesn't have a strong CTA. The alternative to an email button is hyperlinked text, which can confuse subscribers because the text may not tell them what to expect.

Email buttons are incredibly visual. When someone opens your email, it's likely one of the first things that will catch their eye, prompting them to take action, make a purchase, visit your website, or receive an offer. A thoughtfully designed button can increase the likelihood of customers taking action on your emails, making them more effective overall.

Unfortunately, if your CTAs have background images or are images themselves, many users may never see them because their email client has images turned off. Therefore, email buttons are crucial to the success of your campaigns and increasing clicks.

Consider how most people read emails. Like when they read blogs, most people scan for pertinent information instead of reading every word and looking at every image. Your email button stands out from the rest of the content for several reasons, including font size and weight.

Buttons are typically larger with bolder fonts to catch the user's attention. In addition, they have design elements that make them stand out from text and images. As a result, email button CTAs are much more effective at drawing users' attention, making it easier for them to understand what you want them to do.

How to add an email button in HTML and CSS

There are several ways to add an email button in HTML and CSS, and you don't have to be a website developer or master coder to do it to ensure your email buttons are bulletproof. Remember, the two most popular ways to add email buttons are by using images with links or HTML.

Mailchimp makes it easy for you to design your email button, including changing your font with content blocks, allowing you to drag and drop to create buttons with ease.

HTML email buttons

HTML email buttons can be full or fixed-width, depending on how you want your button to look next to the rest of the email layout.

To create HTML email buttons, you'll need to custom-code your email template using the following code:

'''< table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="background-color:#505050; border:1px solid #353535; border-radius:5px;">

<td align="center" valign="middle" style="color:#FFFFFF; font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size:16px; font-weight:bold; letter-spacing:-.5px; line-height:150%; padding-top:15px; padding-right:30px; padding-bottom:15px; padding-left:30px;">
  <a href="http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/" target="_blank" style="color:#FFFFFF; text-decoration:none;">Read More</a>
</td>

As you can see, in this case, your button would read, "Read More." You can also change the font to match your branding and website fonts as you see fit. Of course, the best font for email will depend on your overall branding and design, but we recommend keeping it simple.

Adaptive email buttons

Adaptive email buttons will adapt to the width of the email, depending on the text inside the same cell. These buttons don't have a width specified in the code because they'll follow the same width as the text. The code for adaptive email buttons looks like this:

'''

<td align="center" valign="middle" style="color:#FFFFFF; font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size:16px; font-weight:bold; letter-spacing:-.5px; line-height:150%; padding-top:15px; padding-right:30px; padding-bottom:15px; padding-left:30px;">
  <a href="http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/" target="_blank" style="color:#FFFFFF; text-decoration:none;">Read More Stories On Our Blog</a>
</td>

'''

Luckily, you don't have to know how to code to create the perfect email buttons for your email marketing campaigns. Instead, you can drag and drop a content block into an existing template and edit the HTML as you see fit.

Email buttons do's and don'ts

For your email buttons to be effective, you must ensure they look good and work properly. Here are a few tips to help you get started:

Don't use images

As we've mentioned, not all images are displayed on every email client. Therefore, many of your subscribers might not see your CTA email buttons if they have images turned off.

While using images as buttons can make your buttons look unique and stand out, it's more important for them to appear for all your subscribers if you want them to take action.

Choose the right fonts

Like images, not all fonts display correctly on all email clients. Therefore, you should choose universally recognized fonts. You can use a font generator to help you find the right font for your email marketing campaigns to ensure they stand out and can be displayed properly.

In addition, you should consider font size and weight, which will affect your button's ability to stand out from the rest of the email content.

Consider destination

When using email buttons, you have a particular goal in mind. For example, e-commerce businesses promoting a product to increase sales will likely have an email button that says "Buy Now" after highlighting the product in the rest of the content. If your button doesn't lead to the product page, subscribers will get confused and leave the website. Therefore, you should always ensure you're setting the correct expectations for where customers will end up when they click your button.

Write a strong CTA

The design elements of your email button are crucial for helping it stand out, but the CTA is essential for setting expectations and encouraging subscribers to take action.

Your CTA should only be a few words long to tell customers what to do. Something as simple as "Buy Now" or "Browse Collection" can effectively let customers know what to expect when they click the button.

Harness the power of a strong CTA

A strong email marketing CTA is about more than just the words you use to entice users to take action; the simple addition of a button can draw their attention to your CTA to set expectations and help them understand the next steps.

Buttons are the best way to show subscribers what to do next because they stand out from the rest of the email content. Mailchimp makes it easy to design email buttons that encourage clicks and sales. With the right design, you can improve the effectiveness of your campaigns.