There are ways to offend subscribers if you’re looking for them…but why would you want to do that? Problem is, often you offend or annoy subscribers without even knowing it. I’ve put together a few key things that you may want to watch out for.
Problem: Your emails aren’t customized to cater to my interests
Yes, email is a mass communication tool – but that doesn’t mean that one email appeals to all tastes and interests. Personalised and, I’ve said this before, relevant communication gets better results from recipients.
The danger here is that when you try to cover everyone’s varied interests in one newsletter, your newsletter becomes too long and confusing – a ramble of content that your subscribers will have to filter through to find something that appeals to them.
Solution:
Make sure you send different emails to cater to the specific segments of your list. Ask for your subscribers’ preferences when they sign up, i.e. what kind of information they’d like to read in your emails and how often they’d like to receive them, then stick to it! Don’t email them daily if they requested a weekly email.
Yes it’s a bit more work, but if you keep it simple and work from a template it needn’t take much of your time. Plus, isn’t it better to have smaller, more engaged audiences than just one mass of inattentive inattentive people who delete your newsletter or unsubscribe from it?
Problem: They’re too long – and they don’t get my attention
As I’ve mentioned above, emails that require the reader to scroll through masses of information that could easily fill four or five screens simply won’t be read. It’s too time consuming and too difficult to filter the information you’re actually interested in from that overflow. Email is instant, quick communication, not something your recipients want to spend twenty minutes pouring over laboriously.
Also, you don’t know what dev ice your subscribers read your emails on. What if they read it off a smartphone or iPhone? Space limitations on there are far greater than on a PC or laptop. Think with a small screen on your mind – it will do wonders to your newsletter layout and where you place what content and links!
Solution:
Keep your content short and sweet. If there’s a lot of in-depth information that needs to be conveyed, rather insert a hyperlink that will take me to the full article – it can even be on your site, generating more webtraffic. Make sure the copy above the fold is attention-grabbing and that the call to action is clear.
Problem: Your emails have too many images – and yes, there is such a thing!
Most of us have our images turned off in our email clients by default – it helps me to save on server space, means I spend less money when checking my emails on my mobile and generally helps reduce the number of spam emails I receive. Why? Because spam filters see too many images in an email as a spam threat.
Solution:
When designing your emails, bear in mind that many people block their images and make sure that the area above the fold has enough copy to hold their attention regardless. Keep a balance between copy and images and remember, when uploading your images to your newsletter, to insert alternative text. That way even those of us who have our images turned off will see something other than a blank block where your image is supposed to be.
Problem: Your email just isn’t hip enough.
Like it or not, social media is the hype of the moment – and staying a step ahead of your competitors requires staying ahead on every front. Making it easy for me to share your email with my friends and colleagues shows that you understand the social age online marketing is entering, and that you’re keeping on top of these new developments. Plus, it shows that you’re eager for me to share the information I value in your emails with your contacts, so if you keep the informative content coming I’m likely to help you out and spread the word.
Solution:
Add some social widgets to your footer, making it easy for me to share your newsletter with my social network connections with a simple click. Or you can place a Forward to a Friend link in the footer, so I can easily forward your email to my email contacts. More than anything, if you really want to get my attention, publish your newsletter where it’s fun for me to find – on Facebook or Twitter. When I’m social networking I’m a lot more relaxed than when I’m checking my work emails, and thus in a much more positive and responsive frame of mind.
Problem: It just doesn’t look right…
Different email clients, like Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook and Mweb (to name a few), render emails differently. This means that your email will look different in every subscriber’s inbox. Sometimes the images won’t be aligned the same, or the preview pane will be smaller than the one you designed it for – which means it might not look as appealing to all subscribers as you’d hoped.
Solution:
Conduct a test send! It’s what it’s there for. Try sending your email to as many different email clients as possible – open accounts with the different clients specifically to receive test sends if need be. Whether you try to view it in different clients or not, you should always conduct test sends – it’s the only way to really see what your email will look like and to test that all your links work. (We’ll also be releasing a clever Inbox Preview tool soon; I’ll be able to give you more details in the coming weeks!)
Yes, I know these are pretty subjective – but think about when you receive email newsletters: Don’t you respond the same way?