[reporting by Dorian Benkoil] Back to the future with a little bit of counter-intuitive thinking. Anne Holland of MarketingSherpa talked about what’s working, and not, for her organization’s e-mail newsletters. One of the big bottom lines, she said, was that more boring e-mails — without a lot of glitz — work best. She took a 3-column, multi-colored e-mail and made it, essentially, one text column, a black (instead of red) headline, and a gray click area and increased conversion rates 64%. (Coincidentally that the previous post also had 64%. Not a typo.) “Start thinking Google-style design,” she said. I guess this means don’t let your creative director, who will complain, lead you somewhere that hurts your results.
A few more pointers Holland made:
– An eye-tracking study showed people didn’t even read all the words in even a 10-word headline. Eyes did tend to gravitate to words that were near images, especially of a human face. This is regardless of the user’s age, gender, etc.
– If someone hasn’t opened an email in 90 days, move them to a different file. Eg, move HTML e-mail receivers to text-only, text-only folks to a “hold” file. I was concerned about the preview pane in Microsoft Office, but she said those register as opens.
– Always include a linking URL along with a button, because a lot of email systems disable click buttons. (I’ve also noted this on my Blackberry – why don’t more sites optimize for handheld devices? Am I the only person who reads his e-mails on his Blackberry or Palm device and clicks to the Web from there?)
– For bounces, tie your Web and e-mail servers together. If an e-mail has ever bounced to a user, when s/he visits the site, serve a popup that allows him/her to type in a new address. Also, try mailing bounced folks postcards. Duke University’s alumni association did it, and hard bounces from their alumni emails were cut from 19% from 1.4%, Holland said.
The coverage is sponsored by Click&Buy.
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