How To Make Your Plain Text Emails Hard to Read and Use
September 8, 2009 | Comments Off
Sometimes it's good to step back from discussions like what's new at Gmail and how to add an opt-in form to Facebook and just talk email marketing basics for a bit.
Today, let's talk about email design. Specifically, plain text email design.
While creating plain text emails seems easy (and it is) there are things you can do to make your plain text emails more reader-friendly.
A recent email I received illustrates this well:
Evernote's Plain Text Update
Here's an email I received from the makers of software program Evernote:
(Click image to see full-size)
Now, we could take the easy way out and say that Evernote should be sending HTML emails instead of plain text - so they could more easily present this information in the excellent way they do on their website and blog.
Instead, let's focus instead on how Evernote could make it easier for subscribers to get the information they want out of this email.
For the record, I don't think this is a bad email overall. It has a great tone and a lot of good content in it. I just think that the format makes it hard for subscribers to use and appreciate that content.
Making This Plain Text Email Usable
While this email isn't just one big continuous block of text, it does leave a few things to be desired...
No Maximum Character Width
Notice how long the lines are in this email?
(Click to see full-size)
Those are being cut off by my Gmail account when it runs out of room at around 133 characters - about twice what we recommend as a maximum line length. And if Gmail had let the, the lines would have run even longer than that!
Keeping the lines shorter would mean subscribers don't have to move their eyes so far across the page and back to read the email, making scanning faster and easier.
Headers Aren't Easily Visible and Scannable
If you're going to have an email with separate topics/sections, it's best to use headers (just like you would on a web page) to make those sections easy to find as subscribers scan your email.
This email has headers, but fails to separate them from the corresponding paragraphs.
At the very least there should be another line break between the header and paragraph; I'd probably also try making the header stand out a little more with some hyphens or asterisks.
No Separation of Content Within Paragraphs
Each section of this email has a header and then a single large paragraph of text.
Even at the long line lengths shown here, each paragraph is several lines long. If you were to shorten the lines to 60-70 characters, these would be really long.
This email could be far more readable if you broke the paragraphs apart, maybe used some bulleted lists... you don't have to follow the old "5-sentence paragraph" structure when writing an email!
No Conclusion or Signoff
This email just abruptly ends after the last content section:
What's strange about this is that the rest of the email actually has a great friendly, personal tone to it... so a signature or conclusion of some sort seems like a no-brainer.
Leaving the signature off makes it feel less like an email you're receiving from an actual person at Evernote, and more like a machine-written news summary.
Your conclusion and/or signature need not be elaborate (for example, look at the one in Kayak's email newsletters) but it should be there to bring everything else in your emails back together.
Just For Fun: My Rewrite Of This Email
Here's that same email content, with ~3 minutes' work to format it differently:
It's longer since I shortened the lines and broke up the text a bit, but I think it reads a lot more smoothly than the previous version.
I'm of course biased since this rewrite is my creation, so I'll ask you:
Would you agree that the simple layout changes in this version make the email much easier to scan and read?
I hope so. 
Plain Text Doesn't Have to Be Plain-Jane
It's perfectly fine to send plain text emails; they might work better for you than HTML.
But if you do go the plain text route, don't assume that means there's zero design involved!
How do YOU lay out your plain text emails to make them easy to read?
Share your ideas and thoughts in the comments!
Using Email to Grow a Community: AWeber Talks to User Ramit Sethi
September 8, 2009 | Comments Off
Recently I had an opportunity to sit down with AWeber customer Ramit Sethi and talk about how he's using email marketing to market his business.
Ramit writes about personal finance at iwillteachyoutoberich.com and uses email to market that site, his book and other products.
We talked at length about topics that many of you may have questions about when creating, managing and optimizing an email campaign. Today, with a little help from our YouTube channel, we're going to share those with you.
Using Email Marketing to Grow a Community
In this video, Ramit shares how he:
- Uses email to grow/nurture his community
- Measures success
- Values feedback
- Handles the volume of incoming email and why he believes in being accessible (and doesn't use a do not reply address)
Starting an Email Marketing Campaign
In this video, Ramit shares:
- How he started email marketing
- How often he sent emails to subscribers
- What he put in his emails
- How many autoresponders he's sending
More Videos Now At Our YouTube Channel (And More Coming Soon!)
For a couple more clips from our interview with Ramit, head over to our YouTube channel.
There, you'll find videos on:
- How he increased his open rate by 50% in 7 days
- How he got traffic to his site before email (what he did to get people there in the first place so he could start building his list)
Go to AWeber's YouTube Channel
We'll be publishing more clips from this interview there soon, so be sure to subscribe to our channel to get notified about new videos!
Gmail Gives You One More Reason to Get In the Address Book
September 8, 2009 | Comments Off
Getting subscribers to whitelist you sure is a popular email marketing topic lately.
Fresh on the heels of Yahoo's announcement that users can choose to view only emails from their contacts, Gmail is making a change of its own that makes email from contacts more usable and readable than email from non-contacts.
They're not making a separate inbox for contacts, but they are changing one important part about how they treat emails from certain contacts:
Images On By Default For (Some) Contacts
Gmail recently announced that they'll be enabling images for certain people in users' contact lists.
The details:
- You must be in the Gmail user's contact list.
- You must be authenticating your emails using SPF or DKIM (AWeber does).
- The Gmail user must have sent you at least 2 emails. (They note that this is a starting-out threshold that may change.)
Read the announcement on the official Gmail blog.
"You Mean Subscribers Have to Email ME?"
Yep - getting them to list you in their address books is step #1, but they'll also have to email you a couple times before images will be on by default.
But that's OK. In fact, it's a great reason to do something you should already be doing anyway: ask your subscribers for feedback!
Have them email you their thoughts on your emails...
- What they like
- What they don't like
- What they want you to discuss in future emails
... and not only will you be on your way to meeting Gmail's requirements for having images on by default, you'll gain invaluable insight into how you can improve your emails.
5 Ways a Preheader Can Increase Response and Deliverability
September 8, 2009 | Comments Off
A preheader is a small section that appears at the top of your email, above your message content.
For example, here's the top portion of an email I received from Wells Fargo:
See the two lines above the logo? That's the preheader. It's called a "preheader" because the part just below it - the logo and navigation - are typically called the "header" of the email.
Many businesses use preheaders in their email marketing campaigns to get more subscribers to open and read their emails - and to ensure that their campaigns are as deliverable as possible.
How Can a Preheader Improve Response Rates and Deliverability?
In the uses I've seen, preheaders typically aim to do one or more of the following:
- Link to an online version of the email and/or remind subscribers to turn on images.
Why: Many people view emails with images turned off. If your email relies on images to drive clicks or get a point across, you want those subscribers to be able to see them.
Here's an example from MarketingProfs.com:
- Ask subscribers to add the sender's address to his/her address book.
Why: As we've discussed before, getting in subscribers' address books increases the likelihood that your email will (a) end up in their inbox and (b) actually get opened/read/clicked.
Here's an example from REI.com:
- Deliver a compelling one-line summary of the email to get subscribers to keep reading.
Why: People are busy. Many of them scan emails rather than read them top-to-bottom, and many use Gmail-style text snippets or their email program's preview pane to determine which emails to bother reading.
Giving people an overview of why they should read your email can increase the odds that they'll actually do so.
Here's an example from Backcountry.com:
- Provide an unsubscribe link.
Why: People who want off your list will get off your list one way or another. If you make it hard to unsubscribe, they'll click "Spam" - and they'll keep doing so until they stop seeing emails from you in their inbox.
Here's an example from Viddler.com:
- Remind subscribers why they're getting the email.
Why: Again, people are busy. They may forget that they ever signed up to your list. And if they forget they signed up, they're probably going to want off your list (see above).
Reminding them why they're getting your emails can help you re-engage subscribers and minimize spam complaints.
Here's an an example from LaQuinta.com:
How Do You Use Preheaders?
You'll notice that in the examples above, not everyone uses their preheader the same way.
Doing every one of the things that you could do in a preheader could make it unnecessarily long; you have to pick out what works best for your email marketing campaigns.
Do you use preheaders in your emails? If so, what do you put in them?
Share your ideas in the comments!
Want More Opens or Clicks? Reward Subscribers!
September 8, 2009 | Comments Off
How do you keep subscribers reading your email marketing campaigns and/or clicking to your website, especially as they "age" (as more time passes since they signed up) and you compete for their attention with an increasing number of other senders?
Obviously providing valuable content plays a big part here (as we've discussed on several occasions), but sometimes a little extra incentive can help, too.
Recently Tracey, our Director of Customer Solutions, passed me an email with a helpful example of how to provide an incentive for subscribers to keep reading and clicking on your emails.
How T-Shirt Vendor TeeFury Uses Open and Click Data to Reward Readers
Here's the body of the email from t-shirt site TeeFury (click image below to see full size):
Toward the end of the email, you'll see this banner:
As you can see, they're offering an incentive - a free T-shirt - to a somewhat randomly selected reader.
I say "somewhat randomly" because they're only opening the giveaway to the first handful of people who open their email.
You Can Do This, Too!
Among the many Email Analytics tools available in AWeber is the ability to search for and segment subscribers based on whether they opened a certain email or clicked a certain link.
You can find options to search your list based on whether subscribers opened a certain email or clicked a certain link on the "Subscribers" page of your account:
All you have to do is:
- Decide what behavior you want to reward (reading a certain email? clicking a certain link?)
Note: Personally I prefer having people click on a link rather than open an email. This is because tracking email opens relies on subscribers having images enabled, and some people might read your email but have images turned off - so even though they might read your email, you might not know it.
- Come up with a bonus, gift or special offer specifically for those subscribers who take the desired action
- Tell subscribers about the bonus/gift/offer/giveaway/etc.
- Send the email you want them to act on
- After a certain amount of time (whatever you decide), search your list and pick out your winner/s!
Your Ideas On Using This?
Can you see yourself using this tactic? What sort of incentives would you offer?
Share your thoughts on the blog!
