Eyeballs only scan. Keep it simple
October 29th, 2009
3 Comments
It’s often said in the web design world that people don’t read on their computers, they scan.
That is why when confronted with large amounts of information, people tend not to read and read. Instead, they take a glimpse and unless something pops out at them, they move on .
Consider the patrons in your database. They get your messages in their inboxes along with lots of personal mail and junk, maybe while at work, or possibly with screaming kids in the background. If they signed up for your campaign, then surely they are interested in what you have to say. But in order to build on their interest, how you say it is just as important.
Keeping your messages short and to the point has two important benefits:
- Catering to the short attention span of your readers. Give your patrons something interesting and engaging to see so that they can digest it quickly rather than a feast that seems bloated. If you are selling tickets then take them to your website for more information with an aim to make them purchase them. Or alternatively, you can use One-Click-Guestlist-Bookings to allow your patrons to reserve/book/allocate their time with you on a given night from their emails. This feature is now live. Stay tuned for a blog post about it.
- Less is less. The smaller the amount of content you have in your messages, the fewer words or phrases the SPAM filters ISP’s use will have to find issue with. You really don’t want to say “Buy now!” fifteen times in an e-mail. Less is more too, since your messages mean nothing to your patrons if they can’t even get them.
We’ve all heard it before. The Keep It Simple Stupid rule. But when it comes to promotions, it is more important than ever.
Segment, refine, and keep things short, sharp, clear and targeted. Do this, and you will be guaranteed to have an increase in open rates in your email campaigns.
Obviously!
Hi John
Although at first you may think this is obvious, you’ll be surprised as to how messy and carried away certain venues get when attempting to portray the information of their particular night or event in an E-Newsletter.
Many times, there is too much text and content for something that could have been summarised much better in a smaller amount of text.
Not to mention the really bad habit of having all your text in an image sent out to your database. This is the number 1 habit that we try to eliminate here at MyGuestlist as your emails will go unread by a large percentage of your database due to their email clients not displaying images without first clicking a “show contents” button.
It is very interesting for me to read that blog. Thank you for it. I like such themes and everything connected to this matter. I definitely want to read more on this blog soon.