Improve Response With an Easy to Scan Email

My mom reads every single email I send her, word for word.  I bet your parents (or kids or grandkids or grandparents) do the same thing with your emails.

But I’ll also bet there is at least one group that does not read every single word of every email you send them: the customers and prospects on your mailing list.

Once someone opens up one of your emails, you have (on average) 15-20 seconds to really grab their attention.  If you don’t succeed, then they’ll move on to the next email in their inbox. 

How can you can get the most attention possible from the highest percentage of your readers?  By making your email easy to scan.

You can do this in a variety of ways:

Use short bullet points.  Like in this example below:

 

A brief glance at that email tells you the exact value of their offer.  No need to dig through several paragraphs of text to find out how to take action.  “Print subscribers now also get access to this exclusive online content and here’s how to access that content.”  This is a simple and effective message that you can read through in less than 20 seconds.

Break you content into short blocks of copy.  Of course, not all written content is appropriate for use with bullet points.  If your message requires multiple paragraphs, then break those paragraphs up into short blocks.  

You may have noticed we do this in our VerticalResponse for AppExchange newsletter.  No paragraph in the opening of article of each newsletter ever includes a paragraph that takes up more than 4 to 5 lines of space.  This makes the paragraphs much easier to look at.  A message with longer paragraphs, especially several longer paragraphs, could look overwhelming to a reader who only has a short amount of time to look over your message.

Use teaser content.  If you have a lot to say, don’t say it all within the email.  Use teaser content to allow readers to easily find the stuff that interests them and then push them to that content on your website or blog.  Like this example:

 

Even shrunk down to the small image size we see here, it’s pretty easy to see what this email is about.  They use big headlines, illustrative images, and a line or two of descriptive text to pique reader interest and guide them to the appropriate place for a longer video, article or product description. 

No recipient is likely to be interested in every single thing you have to say in your message.  Taking this approach makes it easy for people to find an item or two that interests them and then take action with those items.

Highlight links and descriptive sentences.  If you do have a longer newsletter or email that includes numerous paragraphs, consider highlighting or bolding important information within each paragraph.  That way a reader can easily scan your email for the most notable info without having to read every word you’ve written. 

Bolding your links makes them stand-out.  And if the goal of your email is to drive people back to your website, then you certainly want your links to be very noticeable. 

Limit the number of articles and calls to action.  Try not to include more than 3-5 topics in a newsletter and 1-2 topics in a general marketing email.  If you include too much info, then your recipients may overlook an item that would have interested them and that means you’ve lost someone who would have otherwise become a customer, registrant, viewer or reader. 

Thoughts or questions about this post?  Let us hear them in the comments!

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Comments

[Andrew Molobetsi]

I suspected there was something wrong I was doing with the emails I send to my list, but just didn't know what it was.

And that's selling all my eggs packed in one large container when half-a-dozen containers would make it easy for customers to buy, so to speak!

I'm going back to put these email writing tips to work for my business.

Thanks.