The BrightWave Marketing founder discusses how keeping your emails succinct and your message on target increases revenue.

When talking with clients and prospects, I get asked many of the same questions about what works best for email marketing. What is the best day to send campaigns? Do people like to read their newsletters in the morning at work or at home during the evening? Do HTML emails get a better response than text emails? Well, those are good questions and ones that often get much attention during research studies, but I generally tend to discard the results. The reason: who cares if Friday gets the best open rate if your customers tend to open and respond to your emails on Monday and Tuesday?

I tend to often steer clients away from the non-specific industry metrics (to a certain degree) in order to focus on their own metrics and how to optimize them. Then you can use the industry stats as a benchmark to compare to but not live by. What works well for others may not work for you. That being said, I am inclined to think one general rule that can be applied for most email marketing campaigns. Keep your emails concise and to the point. 

A relevant study from Email Labs confirms this. It reported users spend 15-20 seconds on each email they open. Therefore, if you have a high open rate but low clickthough or conversion rate then you may find this evidence pertinent to you. If the goal of your email is not immediately clear to the recipient and above the fold, you most likely will not receive the desired response from this user. Yes, your email may look great and include lots of branding and cross promotional efforts but most likely they will be lost on the majority of your audience.

After a client asked me to weigh in on whether I thought their promotional emails for one campaign were too long and content-heavy, I tried to find some case studies and research. Well, I didn't find a whole lot, so I will weigh in with my own opinions and research on this client's emails, comparing the length of similar promotional emails. Below are two different examples of how length and a clear call to action within the content play an important role in determining your email message's chance for success.

The first example is two emails promoting a conference to our client's membership audience (which means they should be engaged and interested in the topic) that is a key revenue driver for the client. The first email was half the length of the second one and the response, as seen in the Figure I below was greater.

The first email had shorter and more direct text that simply tells the reader if they click, they'll find out more on the website, while the second (and longer) email tells the recipient almost too much information. It provides heaps of information on the hotel and travel options, secondary events and the like, which are all on the website and dilute the main registration and conference overview links. Rather than directing them to an interactive and more complete description of the conference's events on the website, the verbose copy could lose the reader in the brief time allotted for reading an email. If the focus is directing them to the website, direct them there so they can view and make the decision at their leisure.

The second example is similar in argument, but with an additional factor for analysis. Both of the emails were sent in order to let a targeted audience know about an event or events at a particular conference they were about to attend. The first one, an Invitation to New Members, like the second and longer email from the previous example, takes all the pertinent information the recipient would need and places it in the email body while the second one, an event schedule, purposefully drives the reader to click to the site for the schedule that they are interested in.

While the first one would be considered a failure because the CTR was extremely low (see Figure II below), it really is immeasurable for success metrics because the recipient is not driven anywhere by a compelling "call to action", either through copy or images. It has all the info in the body (which is why it is so lengthy) and lacks a "click here" type call to action in the body to find out more. They simply read the email and move on.  If this was a transaction email confirming their attendance that would be fine but the goal was to increase attendance for a secondary event within the larger conference. The user would have to painstakingly read through the entire email to find out what and how they were supposed to do this.

Now compare this to the second email that has two key links above the fold that links to the conference schedule. The user is obviously interested since they registered for the event and they don't have to search for information within the email-- they click on one of the links at the top of this short email. As a result, of the recipients who opened the email, 49 percent clicked on a link.

The lack of the clear call to action is a mission critical part of any email. An Advertsing.com study said calls to action account for an 85 percent lift in revenue. In the second set of examples, this is supported by the lack of clickthroughs and as a result, the minimal effect the email will have on registrations/revenue.

The key takeaways are:

1. Keep your emails succinct and message on target in order to achieve whatever goal(s) you are seeking.
2. You have a limited window of the recipient scanning your email-- design accordingly.
3. Clearly define your internal goal (if revenue, which link is the driver and ensure proper and prime placement).
4. Create your layout so users can easily and quickly scan and respond to the email.
5. Create an engaging subject line that clues recipients into what this email is about.
6. Ensure that if the user only was to glance at the email in their Preview Pane that your message would convey the desired information or action.
7. Whether newsletter or promotional email, test it with some non-stakeholders to see how they view and respond to the email.
8. Use the same call to action link in multiple places in the email (text and image).
9. Minimize distractions (e.g., images, corporate marketing and the like) if they don't further your goal to prevent overwhelming the email with non essential content.
10. Measure and compare the results-- don't just focus on the aggregate stats (Opens and CT) for the email but which links were clicked on. When analyzing the data, use that information for the next campaign. This means if most of the people clicked on a graphical image that promotes a separate product or service that wasn't the feature of the email, this means two things: 1) your call to action wasn't clear and  2) the heavily clicked on secondary image deserves its own email focused solely on that product/service.