Where should the CTA appear — above or below the fold?

The "fold" in email is the imaginary line where reading stops unless the subscriber scrolls. On a mobile phone, that line sits somewhere between 500 and 700 pixels down the email. On desktop, it's higher. Because most email opens now happen on mobile, your CTA placement strategy needs to account for a much shorter visible window than it would have a decade ago.

The old advice was simple: put your CTA above the fold so readers don't have to scroll. That still holds for short, high-urgency emails like a flash sale announcement or a shipping confirmation. If your message is one sentence and a button, above the fold is obviously right. But for longer content emails, promotional newsletters, or product stories, putting the CTA first can actually reduce clicks. The reader hasn't been given a reason to act yet. They're being asked to buy before they've been sold to.

For most email formats, a more reliable structure is to lead with the hook or offer, develop it briefly, and then place the primary CTA after one to three short paragraphs. On a tight mobile email, that's usually still above the fold. The goal isn't to force the button above the fold at all costs. It's to place the button at the natural moment of decision. On longer emails, repeating the CTA at the bottom helps with readers who scroll through first before committing.

The right placement genuinely varies by audience, email length, and offer type. The cleanest way to settle it is to A/B test above-fold vs. after-intro placements on your list. You'll also want to check how your CTA placement looks across clients. Litmus and similar preview tools show exactly what the fold looks like across devices, so you're not guessing about what your subscribers actually see when the email opens.

Test one variable at a time: same email, same offer, same copy. The only change is where the button sits. After two or three tests, you'll have a working default for your audience that you can apply to future campaigns.