At my radio network we've been trying to figure out effective Newsletter designs. These are Emails sent to registered users (around 300,000 of them) apprising them of what's new and interesting on our site. The question is - What works and what doesn't work? What gets deleted straight off and what doesn't. And it's turning out to be more complicated than we had originally envisaged.
Let's be clear - Newsletters (after the initial enthusiasm of the user fades) become spammy in nature. And for the longest time now we've been using very verbose emails. I wonder how many people, who don't have time to read friends' mails, really would want a four para mail from a company? So, verbosity is surely out.
Does the reverse work then? Lots of images...clickable images that takes the person to the desired page on your website? Just read an article on marketingvox.com that spoke of use of images in Email marketing efforts. There are two clear issues coming out here -
1. By default images in mail boxes are blocked. There are in fact times when the user has no reason to Download the images cause the root message itself isn't clear without the image.
2. Gender difference. Men and women will react differently to images in the Mail and changes the efficacy of even using an image. An important study by The Journal of Marketing Research was cited (read here) that showed that a well targeted Breast Cancer awareness ad didn't do well with women. The use of images of women triggered defense mechanisms that interfered with the goals of cancer awareness campaigns. Suggestions were of using neutral colors, no female images and starting the communication with 'Hey You'...
However, I'm still struggling with what would really make a user go through and be led by an email sent by a company? Any ideas???
Let's be clear - Newsletters (after the initial enthusiasm of the user fades) become spammy in nature. And for the longest time now we've been using very verbose emails. I wonder how many people, who don't have time to read friends' mails, really would want a four para mail from a company? So, verbosity is surely out.
Does the reverse work then? Lots of images...clickable images that takes the person to the desired page on your website? Just read an article on marketingvox.com that spoke of use of images in Email marketing efforts. There are two clear issues coming out here -
1. By default images in mail boxes are blocked. There are in fact times when the user has no reason to Download the images cause the root message itself isn't clear without the image.
2. Gender difference. Men and women will react differently to images in the Mail and changes the efficacy of even using an image. An important study by The Journal of Marketing Research was cited (read here) that showed that a well targeted Breast Cancer awareness ad didn't do well with women. The use of images of women triggered defense mechanisms that interfered with the goals of cancer awareness campaigns. Suggestions were of using neutral colors, no female images and starting the communication with 'Hey You'...
However, I'm still struggling with what would really make a user go through and be led by an email sent by a company? Any ideas???
There are a lot of issues and good studies on email best practices. I'd suggest following the studies of Marketing Sherpa; they aren't the only ones, but they are among the best.
ReplyDeleteWhen people register to your newsletter, can you ask for additional *optional* information such as their interests, email preferences (HTML or Plain Text), depending on the business context, you could even ask for gender or other background information?
ReplyDeleteI would think the more you know about your newsletter registrants, the better you can deliver desired content and thus avoid deletes or unsubscribes.
I have seen the same newsletter with a different content depending on the recipient’s preference.
There are many email tools can substitute a section depending on criteria in order to build a more personalized newsletter.
And if the person did not fill anything in his/her preference, you can always place the generic content.
Thanx Tamara. Personalisation would be the way to go for us for sure...will sit the tech guys and come up with some options.
ReplyDelete