Recently, I have been seeing a lot of email in which the sender uses lots of text and pictures to communicate the message. And when I say lots, I mean LOTS. I sometimes find myself having to scroll two and three pages to get to the end of the message. Nightclub and event promoter emails are especially notorious for this type of content.
Case in point: A nightclub owner wants to promote a particular event. His email creative ends up full of photos of DJs and scantily clad women. What is not in the email is a good text-to-image ratio, or an easy-to-understand call to action.
To use the old adage, “less is more” seems more than appropriate to email marketing. Here are a few things to consider:
- Most email clients block images by default. If the message is 90% images, the user is left with 10% of the message.
- Sending unstructured content can have the potential to confuse to the reader.
- Using poor design and little or no navigation can result in a poor or incorrect customer perception of what is being communicated.
The bottom line is that you want to want your readers to be able to grasp the essence of what you are sending to them quickly and effectively. What you don’t want is for your readers lose interest because it takes them too long to get the point of your message. Here are some simple steps that can be followed to create great content.
1. Use a good mix of HTML text and graphics. Don’t just fill up your email with cool photos or images that have the words on them.
2. If using plain text, get to the point or call to action quickly. Don’t write a book and expect the subscriber to read the entire thing.
3. Validate your email content for errors. Use an HTML validator such as http://validator.w3.org/.
4. Check to see who is actually opening and reading/clicking your emails. Remove those who don’t.
Until next time,
Jaren Angerbauer, Director of Deliverability, mobileStorm
Drink Responsibly, Drive Responsibly, Email Responsibly.