
I need a sense check, please.
A couple of weeks ago, my son’s drama school sent me this email:

I didn’t reply. I skim-read it, assuming they’d go ahead and charge my card.
But a few days later, I received a chaser email for payment.
Looking at it now, I can see the phrase:
‘With your permission, we can take payment’
actually meant:
‘Please reply to this email and confirm you are happy for us to charge your card.’
But it was so ambiguous I just glossed over it. Did you gloss over it too?
I call this sort of request a ‘Cloudy Call-To-Action (CTA)’ – nebulous, vague and open to interpretation.
Cloudy CTAs are an absolute no-no if you want to get people to reply.
A surefire way to avoid them? Use questions, not statements:
‘Are you happy for us to charge your card?’ would have straight away shown me I needed to reply.
Or perhaps I’m just being pedantic. What do you reckon?
And have you received any Cloudy CTAs recently? If so, I’d love to see them!
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