Note: I originally wrote this post for our company blog at Mailout Interactive Inc.
At our recent workshop, I was speaking to the idea that readers will always prefer one simple message as opposed to many. I also mentioned that most readers spend only 51 seconds per email. One of our workshop participants stood up and expressed what many of us feel: stress from too much email.
We need to remember that our readers are like us: they get to work, they fire up their computer, and they see a long list of emails waiting for them. Some of these are leftovers from the day before. Added to that heap are new emails: messages from coworkers, their boss, and family. There’s also spam, marketing emails, and finally your newsletter.
All of that email in our readers’ inboxes is overwhelming. In a 2007 study by the universities of Glasgow and Paisley, 34 percent of respondents were “stressed” about the number of emails they received. To care for our audience, we need to think about what, and how often, we send in our newsletters.
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Note: I originally wrote this post for Mailout Interactive.
I used to work for a national charity. Each month, I would create an email newsletter. My objective was clear: “I need to inform them!” So I would compile a series of articles on what we’d done in the past month, and what we were about to do. I would also have articles on events, donation opportunities, and photo features. But the one question I wasn’t asking was: who will be reading this?
“Who is my audience?” is the first question you should ask when you sit down to write a newsletter. The goal is to define groups of people as specifically as you can, so that you can send them the content they are the most likely to read.
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Good communication guidelines:
1) when writing = 3 main points on 1 page.
2) when speaking = 3 main points in under 15 minutes.
Ah, the post scriptum. Best used at the end of love letters to reinforce the writer’s affection (PS – I love you), these two letters have found a new home. They are used primarily by banks hawking high interest loans (PS – Act now to take advantage of this generous credit offer!) and by political parties (PS – Help us defeat the Liberals, send us your donation of $50 today!).
I find it hilarious that these types of communication have a “PS” at the end of every single thing they send. No longer an afterword, or a last-minute addition, the “PS” now signifies one thing: that the sender is completely disingenuous.
Design is important… BUT obsessing over a design, without just “getting on with it” and delivering some content is a huge mistake.
When Miles Libbey says that Yahoo “defines spam as anything users don’t want in their inbox” he is revealing that email recipients play a big role in affecting spam filters.
Yahoo, and other ISPs, receive this information primarily through complaints: when a user clicks the “this is spam” button in their email software, it creates a complaint. When multiple users complain about the same sender, or the same email, the internet service providers adjust their spam filters and start blocking that sender.
This underscores two important points:
- You should never send email to someone who isn’t expecting it. This is especially true for an email that looks like a newsletter or marketing piece. Even better: build your list from scratch using a subscription form.
- All email newsletters should have a visible unsubscribe link. People want an easy way to stop receiving email from you. If they can’t find your unsubscribe link, there’s a greater chance they will hit the “this is spam” button. I think it’s best to have a link at the top and the bottom of your email.
If you publish content to Facebook, Twitter, an email newsletter, and a print newsletter you should only be writing your content once in one place: your blog. The beauty of a blog that generates an RSS feed is that your content becomes portable. No need to copy and paste. No need to wrack your brain for articles to write for your next newsletter. Just click publish, and have it happen automatically.
If you’re interested in this type of setup, you can hire me to make it so.
Had to share this brilliant (and true) comic from the Oatmeal.
Via Signal vs. Noise: a quote from a Paul Rand essay. The discussion here is on how a client/manager’s expectations for multiple options ultimately leads to bad design. What do you think?
One of the more common problems which tends to create doubt and confusion is caused by the inexperienced and anxious executive who innocently expects, or even demands, to see not one but many solutions to a problem. These may include a number of visual and/or verbal concepts, an assortment of layouts, a variety of pictures and color schemes, as well as a choice of type styles. He needs the reassurance of numbers and the opportunity to exercise his personal preferences. He is also most likely to be the one to insist on endless revisions with unrealistic deadlines, adding to an already wasteful and time-consuming ritual. Theoretically, a great number of ideas assures a great number of choices, but such choices are essentially quantitative. This practice is as bewildering as it is wasteful. It discourages spontaneity, encourages indifference, and more often than not produces results which are neither distinguished, interesting, nor effective. In short, good ideas rarely come in bunches.
The designer who voluntarily presents his client with a batch of layouts does so not out prolificacy, but out of uncertainty or fear. He thus encourages the client to assume the role of referee. In the event of genuine need, however, the skillful designer is able to produce a reasonable number of good ideas. But quantity by demand is quite different than quantity by choice. Design is a time-consuming occupation. Whatever his working habits, the designer fills many a wastebasket in order to produce one good idea. Advertising agencies can be especially guilty in this numbers game. Bent on impressing the client with their ardor, they present a welter of layouts, many of which are superficial interpretations of potentially good ideas, or slick renderings of trite ones…
Expertise in business administration, journalism, accounting, or selling, though necessary in its place, is not expertise in problems dealing with visual appearance. The salesman who can sell you the most sophisticated computer typesetting equipment is rarely one who appreciates fine typography or elegant proportions. Actually, the plethora of bad design that we see all around us can probably be attributed as much to good salesmanship as to bad taste.
This naked Coke can (the invention of Ryan Harc) is one of the most beautiful things I have seen. Whats more, by removing the color, this packaging reduces the energy needed to both create and recycle the cans.
