Introduction
I frequently check the Newsletter output from a number of our Clients, and am often surprised by uncharacteristically low recorded reads ratios. Glancing at the designs, I often note that a number of the critical 10 commandments of Newsletter design have been broken. Most commonly, the ’Dear Bob’ salutation; which means that many email applications would regard such a mailing as general spam, and file it accordingly. To counter the likelihood of this happening again in the near future, I have decided to publish the 10 commandments for the benefit of all ..
Salutation
You must address each respondent individually; I use the Affino Text Design Element > Custom Text > ’Dear FirstName’. This is both psychology - as you are addressing the recipient directly; as well as an absolute necessity when running the gauntlet of email filters which would most likely render your email as spam if it did not contain the recipient’s name.
Personal Sign-off
Let the recipient know who is addressing them - it always better to have a personal sign-off - say from the CEO or Chairman - perhaps with some kind of signature assigned also. A personal sign-off will have 100% more impact than a general, uncredited statement.
The Hook
Your Newsletter headline must be arresting and engaging, or else the recipient will simply not bother reading what you have to say; you need to offer a dynamic lead-in to the content that follows.
The Call to Action
All Newsletters must have a central Call to Action - what do you want the recipient to do - get in contact with you? Sign up for a seminar? Renew their subscription? The central purpose for a Newsletter is to encourage your target audience to interact with you further; make sure you encapsulate your message with a genuine required resultant reaction.
The Contact Point
Ensure that you are properly contactable by at least including an Email Address and Phone Number prominently on the Newsletter - give the customers the greatest amount of options in how they may contact you, and it increases their likelihood of doing so.
Opt-out-ability
All Newsletters are required by law to have a visible ’Unsubscribe Me’ link; make sure yours is displayed prominently for those that do not wish to continue to receive mailings from you. Affino of course adds this automatically to all Newsletter mailings.
Design Simplicity
There used to be a time when a lot of flash, animations and advanced JavaScript functions were all the rage with Newsletter. Today’s email applications can and typically do filter out any dynamically executable files, as well as all images - so use images sparingly, and only to punctuate text elements - use background colours on your image placement areas, so that when your images are stripped out, the Newsletter still maintains its structural integrity. On the latest Comrz Newsletter design, there is always a text alternative for any image used, whether logo or article thumbnail.
Content Brevity / Concentration
The more short and succinct your message is, the more impact it has; there are far too many Newsletters which have way too much content - I guess they are sort of trying to metaphorically blanket bomb you with the hope that something hits; the real return though is that Users get turned off by too much choice and simply don’t bother to read the Newsletter.
Focus
The more targeted your newsletter, the better its results will be - make sure that both your content and audience are perfectly matched. If your content or audience is too broad, this will simply result in recipients unsubscribing from a mailing that they perceive to be irrelevant.
Issue Reference
For ongoing dialogues evolving from the Newsletter, it is important to have a Newsletter issue number or date stamp - to provide a frame of reference for any future correspondence.
