When analyzing the success of your email campaigns, you might be staring right at useful data that goes unused. Take, for instance, the amount of newsletter copy used to tease an article on your website. "Can we really expect more clicks just by playing with paragraph length and number?" asks Mark Brownlow in a post at the Email Marketing Reports blog. And if six months of data gathered from his newsletter broadcasts are to be believed, the answer is yes.
In Brownlow's experience, the "ideal" teaser has two paragraphs, each containing two to four lines. "An acceptable explanation," he notes, "might be that if the teaser is too short, it doesn't provide enough information to drive a response. If it's too long, people move on before clicking."
Brownlow is careful to caution readers that they must test their own campaigns to determine what works for them. He also includes a reminder that individual components like teaser length don't exist in a vacuum; they belong to an organic whole. "We all want step-by-step instructions for each part of the email," he says, "but the customized, holistic approach is what will win you more clicks in the end."
The Po!nt: Look for elements you haven't yet measured—then measure them. You might gain insights that can improve the performance of your marketing efforts.
Source: Email Marketing Reports. Click here for the full post.
by Christina "CK" Kerley
Comments
by Kelly Tue Jun 23, 2009
Would love for you guys to share tips about how to test how your email renders in different email clients. Today's article didn't have line breaks between paragraphs for me - making it a little harder to parse.
by Mark Brownlow Wed Jun 24, 2009
Kelly, there are various services that now let you test your email design in dozens of clients and webmail interfaces. They're not expensive, either. Two of the common ones:
http://litmusapp.com/email-testing
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/testing/