It is commonly understood that the primary battle with email marketing is getting the recipient to open it! But, once that is overcome, it is so disappointing how many organisations fail to create an email that is effective. This post looks at three simple tasks that can improve email effectiveness.
Task One: Time yourself reading it
(I said it was simple.) Research suggests that the average read time of an email has grown to 11 seconds (according to research by Litmus). If your key message has not been said before you get to 10 seconds, unless the recipient is already excited by what you are saying, it is unlikely that the recipient is going to get it.
Task Two: Stare at the email
(Are you thinking: “Really? Isn’t this patronising?”? Please read on!) Brains will assess the value of the email within a split second. If your email is full of words and poorly formatted the reader is likely to view it as a challenge to get through and delete it. Or if it is too visual, with distracting or even conflicting images, the eyes will fail to read the important content and it will get deleted.
Task Three: Send it to your email accounts. All of them
If your email has any business outcome riding on it (new business, customer retention, stakeholder update… and all that), it really is worth your effort of sending to your different email accounts and checking it on different devices. Some mobile platforms will disable images by default with others allow them – what is the impact of this on your recipient? What about browser-based email readers? How do these appear? Bear in mind that browsers will add their own formatting to, for example, hyperlinks.
Improve Email Effectiveness
I said these three tasks were simple. If only marketers took the time to do these though! With GDPR coming in to effect in a matter of months, an opted in and engaged audience is going to be worth so much more to organisations than ever. It is going to be critical that companies do not lose contacts through creating emails that cause recipients to chose to unsubscribe.
What these tasks are based on
Timing
When I turned up at one company, I asked to see the emails that the sales team sent out. It took several requests to actually get a copy but when I did, I was horrified! (OK, may be too strong… perhaps ‘aghast’.) The email was long. Really long. With headings and paragraphs and then, later, bullet pointed lists. While the info was ‘key to the sales pitch’, I don’t believe for one moment that the email was the place to position all of those messages.
You can improve email effectiveness by creating content that is easy to read and short enough that the recipient is able to get to the end without feeling that the time was wasted. And, according to research, that is 11 seconds of reading or 55 words.
Formatting
I have received emails where the most obscure formats are used to emphasise information.
- Some emails have just been bullet points, but where each statement is written long hand!
- Others have used an array of fonts to accentuate something.
Distracting, isn’t it? You can improve email effectiveness by keeping it simple. Not all of us have a creative talent for layout. Let the designers create artwork and let emails just say the words needed.
Testing
Images are a common issue when it comes to rendering emails. I recommend keeping them to a minimum. I recently addressed an email style that had been employed where the email was a series of images. Even the text had been embedded. In testing this approach, I was able to prove that it was ineffective, with some email tools not showing any images, leaving the recipient with only the option to unsubscribe! So guess what they did!
It doesn’t take much to run tests with tools like Campaign Monitor, Click Dimensions and, my favourite, MailChimp. The benefit of investing time in to testing is assurance that your emails are readable and you reduce unsubscribes.
Summary
There are so many things that improve email effectiveness and that is why marketing agencies are useful! But the above tasks will help you on that journey. The important thing to remember is that you should protect the recipient’s time. Think about how they will feel after reading your email. That aftertaste is how they will remember your brand!
Only write what you need to write.
Don’t make it hard to read.
Check that the recipient is likely to receive the version of email you intend to send!
But keep making emails. When done well, they remain a valuable B2B marketing tool to help maintain your relationship with both your customers and your contacts.
Headway Marketing and Emails
We use a range of tools to monitor the effectiveness of email marketing for clients and take a strategic view when creating and sending emails. If you want to explore how you can still use emails (even after GDPR takes effect) to grow your business, please contact us via the form.