Wouldn’t it be great if your leads could do some of the work for you when it comes to getting more eyes on your email marketing content? Well, they can, as long as you put the right prompts into place.

While many marketers focus most on the number of click-throughs to their website their emails generate, prompting email recipients to share the email content with others who might be interested is a great way to reach new prospects. And in addition to opening up the door to people who might not even know about your brand, a peer recommendation carries a lot of weight for boosting brand authority right out the gate. That can mean more engaged leads and give your email list a boost.

The first step towards getting your leads to share your content is to create great content in the first place. If you’re creating content that really matters to your leads, you’re going to have more people seeing the value and wanting to share that value with others. Of course, though, excellent content alone isn’t going to do it. Keep reading for some useful tips for inspiring your email recipients to spread the word about what you have to offer.

It’s All About the CTA

A strong call to action can make all of the difference when it comes to getting your leads to market your content for you, and it makes sense. CTAs are all about inspiring readers to do something specific, whether that’s reaching out for a demo, visiting landing pages, or in this case, sharing the content with someone else.

If you’re already targeting your emails to a certain and specific segment of leads (and if you’re not — you should be), then half of the work here is already done. Segmenting your emails means that you know the information your recipients receive is valuable to them, which makes it more shareworthy from the get-go.

As for your CTA itself, it’s important to optimize it to catch readers’ eyes and incite the action you’re looking for. Here are three places to start:

Make it a Button

A button stands out on the page a lot more than a simple link. These buttons have one purpose and one purpose only: to incite a click. They should be bold, obvious, and very clear in their directive. In the case of a call to action-driven toward sharing, they should link to a page or message that is uniquely geared toward leads who aren’t enrolled in your email marketing.

Be Clear in Your Language

Your call to action itself needs to be as clear as it gets, which includes using an action word to tell your recipients exactly what the button does. “Share this ebook,” “Email to a friend,” or “Send to a coworker” are all direct and concise CTAs that couldn’t be more clear about what you’re asking for.

Pay Attention to Design

Email design and content are equally integral. Part of ensuring that your CTA button stands out is optimizing the design features in and around it. Does the color stand out on the page? Is the text readable against the background? Little design features can have a big impact on whether your button registers as someone scans the page, so do what you can to make it pop.

What Types of Emails Should You Encourage Leads to Share?

Most marketing emails can warrant a CTA driven toward sharing, including:

• Email newsletters
• Emails you send once someone downloads an asset
• Drip campaigns
• Promotional campaigns
• New content announcements
• Webinar invitations

Basically, any email that isn’t transactional or totally personal to a minute subset of leads can benefit from a “share” button. It’s a good rule of thumb to make it a habit to include a “share” button on your emails, even if you’ve already got another call to action on the page. However, decide which one you want to direct the most attention to since there tends to be more value in highlighting one CTA — at least so far as improving conversions go.

Also important is to track the link on the CTA button so that you can see how successful you actually are in getting leads to share your content. If your call to action isn’t performing how you expected it to, make a tweak and then re-evaluate later. This could mean changing the CTA language, the design, the format, or the placement on the page — or all of these things! You’ll know that you’ve found the sweet spot when your contact list starts to grow from content shares.

Having leads share your content for you is a way to provide new prospects with “social proof” that what you’re offering is something they need. From there, you can work your marketing magic to take them further down the funnel.