A Word About Email Message Design
“Brevity is the King of Content”
KISS (“Keep It Simple Stupid”)
Let’s face it, tons of Emails compete in our inbox for our attention, many of which we will never open. If we do open them, we may skim them. In studies of how Newsletters were “read” it has been shown we notice content on the left side of the screen more. We should design our Messages to reflect this, some trends now are to be considered:
- Try a short subject line to stand out
- Try a clean, crisp Email Campaign that is minimalistic
- Link infographics and videos to increases lead generation
EYE-TRACKING HEATMAP
Source : Nielsen Norman Group
- Average time alloated to “skim reading” a Newsletter was 51 seconds
- Emphasis was given to first 2 words of the headline
- Only 19% of Recipients fully read a Newsletter
- 35% of the time the audience skims only parts of the Newsletter
What can we learn from this?
You’re probably speed-reading this blog post, so we’ll get to the good stuff. Here are a couple of tips for getting the important bits of your email read:
- Keep it short - & keep the most important points of the message near the top.
- Optimize your headlines - For example, a headline like “3 tips for improving email usability and response rates” could be rephrased as, “Email usability: 3 tips for improving your response rates”.
- Minmize the Introduction
- Focus the message - Focus on the key point of the message.
- Make it scan-friendly - Limit body copy to easily-readable paragraphs, preferably under 60 characters in width. Selectively use images to reinforce your message, as images often take less time to understand than words.
- Align to the left - Notice how little attention the right-hand column of the email above is getting? That’s because readers of left-to-right languages (like English) are accustomed to scanning from the top-left first. Keep this in mind when designing two- or more column layouts.
Finally, your email design may only get an average of 51 seconds of fame per reader (if it gets ‘read’ at all). So how will you make the most of it?
Source: Article here
Take home points & Last words:
- Long Emails don’t get read
- Use lots of “bling” in your Newsletters (infographics, links, Video, social media, interesting design and multi-media)
- Why shorter is better
