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Your CTA is what moves the conversation forward.
Local business owners are busy. They’re not sitting at a desk all day refreshing email. To get their attention, your CTA needs to be easy to act on.
Let’s break down what makes them work and look at some examples you can use in your outreach.
Outline:
If you’re doing cold emails, which means they’ve never heard from you before, you can’t ask for a meeting in your CTA. You don’t even know if they’re interested.
You need to ask a qualifying question that is easy to say yes to.
“Is this something you’re interested in?”
“Do you sell to _?”
“_ is something you’re looking to achieve this year?”
“Can I send you more information?”
These are low-commitment CTAs that can spark conversations, and after qualifying them, you can ask for a meeting.
Even if you can sell your service or product nationally, breaking down your list into locations makes your subjects more specific, which boosts open rates (and your replies).
“Offer for marketing agencies” is pretty generic, while “Offer for marketing agencies in Tampa” has more chances to get opened.
Whenever possible, add neighborhood names or community events in your subject line, and in the email body, customize one paragraph based on the business context.
If you have a feature like AI Snippets in your outreach platform, this is something easy to do at scale.
If your prospect never replied to you, you shouldn’t use beautiful email templates.
Yes, they’re good for your brand, and it makes sense when they submitted a form or have replied to your email domain before.
But if this is a cold campaign, always use plain text. It drastically reduces your chances of getting into spam.
Design still matters even when you can’t add a button. Make sure your CTA is separate from the rest of the content.
“Hey there,
I was looking into [company name] and since you’re in [location], I thought this might interest you.
[Add your value proposition]
Is this something you’d be interested in?
Best regards,”
Every decision we make is based on emotion. When we buy something, we like to say the cost-benefit is great, you need this, it will help solve a problem — trying to add something rational.
And don’t get me wrong, our decisions can go through a rational process, but the trigger is always an emotion.
You buy food because you feel hungry. You buy a nice t-shirt because you want to feel good about yourself. You buy a coffee because you don’t want to feel tired.
And so it goes on.
So you can’t write like a robot, or let your AI write like one. You’re talking to human feelings, even when you’re targeting a company and don’t know the owner’s name.
Make sure your AI understands what converts, and make sure you’re writing in a conversational tone.
Resquared is the AI platform built specifically for selling to local businesses. Our AI has been trained on millions of sales interactions, led by our team of sales experts and data scientists.
And with our database of over 13 million local businesses, you can:
Schedule a demo with our team, and we’ll walk you through real examples.
Cold email CTAs don’t need to be complicated. They just need to be clear, local, and easy to act on.
The best CTAs feel like a personal invitation, not a pushy sales pitch.
Keep it simple. Keep it local. Keep testing. That’s how you’ll spark more replies, start more conversations, and turn them into real opportunities
A good CTA is clear, low-commitment, and easy to act on. Instead of asking for a meeting right away, start with qualifying questions or offers of quick information.
This makes it easy for busy local business owners to reply.
Adding city names, neighborhoods, or local context makes your emails feel more relevant and boosts replies.
Local business owners are far more likely to respond to messages that clearly apply to their community.
One main CTA per email is best. Too many options create confusion and reduce responses. Keep it simple: one clear action that makes sense as the next step.
