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.

What you can do

• Make your content compelling: when you write, make it awesome.  Develop a reputation for sending really good content that is either helpful or entertaining.
• Send just 1-3 articles: less articles means a recipient can scan the email quickly, and improves the chances that they will “dive in deeper” to one of your articles.
• Don’t send too often: if you send an email too often, you contribute to the overload in your subscribers’ inboxes.  Send at proper intervals; I think a frequency of 2-4 weeks is right for most audiences.
• Ask for feedback: call or email your recipients and ask them how you could improve your newsletter.
• Provide a way for them to opt-out: if a subscriber is too overwhelmed to continue receiving your emails, they should be able to unsubscribe quickly and easily.

The customer above expressed relief at being able to read an email quickly, and then file it away.  Too many articles, or too much information, can overwhelm a reader.  This means you will need to prioritize: what is the most important thing(s) I need to say?  Cut down the number of articles, and the length of each article.

When you keep your newsletter simple, you will convey your message more effectively, and cut your subscribers’ stress at the same time!

Other resources on email stress

• “Email is ruining my life!“, BBC, 2008
• “Workers suffer from email stress“, London Evening Standard, 2007
• “Email reply to all: leave me alone“, Washington Post, 2007
• “Email Overload in the Workplace: A Multi-Dimensional Exploration“, Orange, 2006

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.

Here’s how it worked while I was working at the charity.  Generally, we had two groups: donors and stakeholders.  I soon learned that these groups differed in the way they processed email. Over the years, I created profiles for my readers with the idea of serving them the right type of content.  Here’s an example of how this worked for donors and stakeholders:

For donors

Most of our donors were A-type personalities: they were always on the move, moving from meeting to meeting, and generally consuming email on-the-go.  I started calling different donors on my list to ask them what kind of information they wanted to receive.  After interpreting those conversations, I came up with two types of email they wanted to receive:

• Yearly: a longer update on where their money was going. This email would say “Yearly report” right in the subject line.  It was formal and contained an introduction, a financial chart, success stories, and a conclusion.
• More frequently: quick “actionable” requests. These people were problem solvers: they wanted just one article, that quickly and clearly defined a problem for them to solve.  This could mean an urgent financial need, or an important event that we wanted them to attend.  Because it was likely that they would be reading on their Blackberries, the subject line and the first line of content were very important for this type of email.

For stakeholders

These were the people in the community who identified strongly with our work and our narrative. This group was definitely more relaxed when it came to email: they would read email leisurely.  For them, I decided to send:

• A regular monthly newsletter: this was a traditional newsletter, with 3-5 articles.  Whenever I could, I included a photo with each article that came from our charity work (no clipart allowed!).  Each issue also included at least one story.  These recipients loved hearing real-life stories and examples; these types of articles were always my “most viewed.”

If you don’t know you’re audience, it will be hard to know what to say.  Building a profile for the different groups within your subscription list is a great first step to understanding what to send your audience.

1) when writing = 3 main points on 1 page.

2) when speaking = 3 main points in under 15 minutes.

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.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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’re interested in this type of setup, you can hire me to make it so.

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.