Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Effective email marketing
I was recently asked to present on what makes HTML messages effective. It didn't take me too long to come up with my top list, so I figured I'd share it with you. This list is based off my experiments and from industry standards.
- Provide a strong from and subject line
This is the first line your reader will see. As more and more email is being sent, it is going to take a lot to break through the clutter. This is your first impression, make it work. Oh, and do it with less than eight words. - Get to the point
As with web sites, you have 0.2 seconds to get a readers attention. They have opened your email, tell them why they should continue reading. Do this in a short amount of text. When I was asked what an appropriate amount of text is, I replied "about 1/3 what you would put in a paper letter." - Avoid gimmicky language
Refrain from the salesman-like approach. As email becomes more sophisticated, so do the readers. A quick turn-off is the obtrusive sale. - Present a call-to-action
Ask the reader to take the next step, whether it is clicking on a link or replying to the message. You can't expect any measurable analytics if you don't ask for some sort of action to take place. - When a user clicks on a link, take them to the link they clicked on.
This may sound natural, but too many times I have clicked a link and been required to search for more information. Give the user what they expect. - Write for readability
Writing on email and the web is different than print. On the web (and email), users scan content and very rarely read every word.
- Use bullet points and lists
- When necessary, use headings
- Single space at the end of sentences, hotmail, yahoo and gmail all add funky characters for the nbsp;
- Don't send attachments
For mass campaigns, emails with attachments will be blocked. Provide the attachment as a download on your website and put a link in the email. - Follow SPAM legislation
This is very important. Don't give email marketers a bad name.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Help make Gmail better
Google has posted a small form which allows you to add feature requests to help make Gmail better. A few of my complaints (which are really only minor) have been the automatic insertion of contacts when I send email, and the lack of ability to remove parts of conversations. It is nice to see those are listed.
Another nice feature for us email designers is better support of CSS. It would be nice if my fonts looked as nice in Gmail as they do in other services.