 One of the key challenges of email marketing is how to get your message across to the reader. Notice the last word… reader. That’s right, no matter how fancy we try to make our email messages with colors, fonts, images, etc., email is still a written medium. Words are what make or break an email campaign.
Compounding this problem is that people read differently on a computer screen than they do in print. Michael Agger covered this pretty well in a recent article for Slate.
Emails are Scanned, Not Read
Email presents many other challenges than just the words you use, and a key challenge is the attention span of the reader. Email clients are increasingly shrinking the area with which you have to work your wordsmithing. Your message is competing for attention with other message subject lines, folder lists, and advertisements all happening around the reading area.
Furthermore, it is estimated that the average email is only open for 2-5 seconds before the reader takes an action. Eye tracking studies also show that readers tend to skip large blocks of text.
Design for Scanning and Action
Given the challenges of writing for online viewing, successful email paragraphs have the following characteristics you can use:
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Headline and Subheads – action oriented and clickable
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1-2 sentence descriptions supporting the headline
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Use benefit oriented bulleted lists
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Final thoughts
White space and color are your friends. Don’t crowd your paragraph or it reduces the functionality and scanning you are trying to create. Use colored backgrounds, and occasionally bolded words to help pull readers through longer content. When using images, be sure they support the copy points, and they don’t replace them, in case of image blocking.
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