How easy should email newsletters and e-blasts be to read? Very easy, according to a study of more than 40 million emails by Boomerang.

How easy?

Aim for the 3^rd-grade reading level. Emails written at that level got a 36% higher response than those written at a college reading level — and 17% higher response rate than those written even a high-school reading level.

Emails written at a 3^rd-grade reading level get a 53% response rate

To keep your readability high, choose short words and short sentences.

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Source: Alex Moore, “7 Tips for Getting More Responses to Your Emails (With Data!),” Boomerang.com, Feb. 12, 2016

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The most valued email newsletters in the Nielsen Norman Group’s latest round of usability studies used these formats:

1. Headlines with short blurbs. This was, by far, the most favored format.

If you have more than 5 topics or articles, consider:

• A concise headline
• Blurbs ranging from 1 line to 2-4 sentences to even a few brief paragraphs
• Link to the full story for more information

If your email newsletter also covers more than 2 printed pages, add a table of contents.

2. Bulleted lists of information such as upcoming events, discounts and specials.

3. Single-story newsletters, such as daily meditations, articles, recipes, promotions, promotion, recipes or events. Include the full story if you use this approach.

Make them short and focused.

Note that all of these formats are short and focused. Subscribers considered newsletters with too much information or diverse content overwhelming and cluttered.

Note: Include no more than two full-length stories in your email newsletter. Keep them tight.

Be consistent.

Whatever format you choose, be consistent. Subscribers learn your format and use it to find what they’re looking for.

Subscribers also valued in email newsletters:

• Relevant, interesting information
• Clean, easy-to-use design, little clutter
• High-quality graphics and images
• Few ads

Subscribers did not value in email newsletters:

• E-commerce or sales newsletters
• Irrelevant, impersonal information
• Frilly design
• Unsolicited newsletters

What format do you use for your email newsletter? What format makes the most sense?

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Source: Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade, and Jakob Nielsen; Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6th Edition; Nielsen Norman Group, 2017

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From the Can’t-Win-For-Losing Department: Although subscribers’ No. 1 piece of advice to email newsletter creators is to keep e-zines short, those same subscribers generally get frustrated when newsletters are too brief.

This according to the Nielsen Norman Group’s 6 rounds of email newsletter usability studies conducted over 16 years.

To make sure you’re delivering the goods in email newsletters:

1. Pay off the subject line. Don’t overpromise and underdeliver. (But don’t underdeliver and overpromise, either.)
2. Don’t omit details. Don’t make recipients search for the price, for instance.
3. Don’t make them click. Don’t use email newsletters to drive clicks. Use them to deliver value. And put that value right there, in the newsletter.
4. Don’t cut off midsentence. Subscribers see that as a way to force clicks.
5. Make links clear. If recipients must click to read, be very clear about what they’ll get if they do click. Deliver enough details to draw subscribers to your website.

So avoid Click here, Read more in email newsletters.
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Sources: Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade, and Jakob Nielsen; Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6th Edition; Nielsen Norman Group, 2017

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When a Toyota dealership wrapped up its car-maintenance-and-new-models e-zine with information about getting more protein into your diet, subscribers were surprised.

They’d signed up for the car information, but not the diet advice. And since when was their dealer an expert in nutrition?

That’s one of the most interesting findings among the Nielsen Norman Group’s 199 usability guidelines for e-zines and email blasts:

Focus your e-zine. Don’t give subscribers any extra bonus material. They don’t want it.

Indeed, the most highly rated newsletters in NNG’s usability studies all contained highly focused content with no extraneous information. Users don’t want extraneous irrelevant information to get in the way of relevant, targeted information they can use.

To give subscribers what they’re looking for:

1. Focus on your area of expertise.

If you’re sending out a car dealership e-zine, tell me about cars. I don’t want to hear about your grandchildren, your vacations or your high-protein diet.

2. Cover a single topic.

Subscribers in Nielsen Norman Group studies often felt overwhelmed by the number of topics in email newsletters. They preferred newsletters to focus on one story or offer short, focused snippets of information on each topic.

“There’s pretty much a ‘don’t waste my time’ phenomenon at play,” write the Nielsen Norman Group researchers. “If newsletters … overloaded a message with unrelated topics they were generally disliked by recipients.”

3. Hew to the subject line.

ClimateNexus.org sent out an e-zine with the subject line: “Planet’s Cool New Agreement, Navy’s Biggest RE Buy, and More.”

With an emphasis on and More: The message itself included links to 105 stories.

“The newsletter contained a number of news stories that were not encompassed by the subject,” a subscriber kvetched to NNG researchers. “The amount of content was overwhelming. I would prefer a shorter, more curated list. I feel like the subject line opens up the door for them to take the email anywhere.”

So drop the and more. E-zine subscribers want relevant, targeted information wrapped up in a pithy subject line. If a story doesn’t hew to that subject line, take it out.

And if a quote doesn’t hew to that subject line? Take it out.

When The New York City Parks Daily Plant newsletter delivered a Quote of the Day that was unrelated to the rest of the e-zine’s stories, one subscriber grumbled to NNG researchers, “‘Quote of the Day’? Is that supposed to relate to the information in the newsletter?”

Yes. That’s supposed to relate to the information in the newsletter. So make sure it does. Choose stories — and quotes — only if they hew to the subject line.

4. Be focused … but not too focused.

Are you so focused that some of your subscribers feel left out? Even for a single issue?

As you remain focused, don’t get so segmented that subscribers question whether your newsletter is for them. Examples from NNG research:

• One subscriber felt alienated by a grocery store newsletter, which, he felt, focused on mothers instead of young men. “We eat too, you know!” he told NNG researchers.
• A Parenting.com e-zine greeted subscribers, “Dear Mom” — leaving out the fathers who had also subscribed.
• When a BNET.com newsletter, Business Tools for Busy Leaders, covered hiring practices and other HR topics in one issue, some subscribers felt it was not aimed at a general business audience.
• A single special issue about California wine made subscribers to a WineLoversPage.com e-zine think the newsletter focused exclusively on California.

Solutions:

1. Indicate your broader focus in each issue: Include next week’s topic in one line at the bottom on the message, for instance, or quick images and links to the last three topics.
2. Consider offering segmented e-zines to California wine lovers or HR managers.
3. Mostly, though, counsel the folks at the Nielsen Norman Group: “Know who your audience is and work to create well balanced content in each edition to satisfy your entire customer base.”

5. Offer focused … variety.

While subscribers demand focus, they don’t want to be bored. And while it makes no sense to try to offer something for everyone, you might reach more people with a little extra variety.

So steal a tip from History.com’s This Day In History e-zine. It focuses on one historical item in each issue. But it also provides links to other several events that occurred on the same day.

That’s variety. And focus.

Amen.

Learn more about focus.

What techniques do you use to focus your e-zines?

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Sources: Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade, and Jakob Nielsen; Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6th Edition; Nielsen Norman Group, 2017

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The No. 1 advice email newsletter subscribers have for e-zine senders? Keep it short.

This according to the Nielsen Norman Group’s 6 rounds of email newsletter usability studies conducted over 16 years.

People spend just 51 seconds, on average, with an email newsletter after opening it, according to an NNG study.

“The rule for web content is to keep it short,” writes Jakob Nielsen, principal of the Nielsen Norman Group. “The rule for email content is to keep it ultra-short.”

Why so short?

Why do people spend so little time with email newsletters?

• Too many emails. Organizations and individuals send out 347.3 billion emails a day, according to Statista. That’s a lot of competition for attention in the inbox. (And that doesn’t include all of the email marketing pieces, blog posts and other content marketing pieces screaming for your readers’ attention.)
• Tiny screens. Around 81% of people use a mobile app to open their emails. And yet, Hubspot found that only 56% of companies have a marketing strategy to send mobile-friendly emails. That’s despite the fact that the tiny screen causes all kinds of usability problems.
• Audience and sender sophistication. As email newsletters have become shorter, more visual and more scannable, subscribers have learned to expect more tightly edited e-zines.

The result? Readers want less.

“Users basically said that newsletters are bad if they take too much time or demand too much work of the user,” Nielsen writes. “Newsletters are good if they … are quick reads that do not feel frivolous.”

So how long should email newsletters be?

How long should email newsletters be?

The short answer is, it depends.

The longer answer requires math. But stick with me. It’s worth it.

People read about 200 words per minute. So figure Average Reading Time, or A.R.T., a concept created by The Poynter Institute’s Roy Peter Clark.

To figure A.R.T., multiply the number of minutes you think people will spend reading your message by 200 words per minute. The result: your recommended word count.

We know that people will spend an average of 51 seconds — let’s call it a minute — with your email newsletter. So multiply one minute by 200 words per minute to get the recommended length of your e-zine in words.

The answer: 200 words per newsletter.

Aim for 200-word email newsletters.

This recommendation is borne out by another study.

Emails of approximately 20 lines of text or about 200 words results in the highest email click-through rate for most industries, according to a study of more than 2.1 million customers by Constant Contact. (Marketing emails click-through rate for most industries requires even fewer words.)

The Constant Contact research also showed that 3 or fewer images get the highest click-throughs.

But maybe your e-zine should be longer. Or shorter. …

The more often you send your newsletter, the shorter it should be, according to Campaigner. Keep dailies to a page or less, weeklies at 5 to 7 pages or less. Monthlies can be longer, but only if you have truly fascinating information.

Too long? Send less more often.

Or maybe it should be really, really short.

The only email newsletter with the highest open rate in an NNG study was Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day. It’s just a few lines long.

That doesn’t include the subject line, but it does include the call to action.

What’s your email marketing strategy? Would your email newsletter be twice as good if it were half as long?

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Sources:

Rebekah Carter, “Essential Email Marketing Statistics To Strengthen Your Strategy in 2023,” Ecommerce Platforms, November 15, 2022

Mike Renahan, “The Ideal Length of a Sales Email, Based on 40 Million Emails,” HubSpot, July 11, 2018

Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade, and Jakob Nielsen; Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6th Edition; Nielsen Norman Group, 2017

Jason Fidler, “New Data: How the Amount of Text and Images Impact Email Click-Through Rates,” Constant Contact

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Talk about competition in the inbox: Today, organizations and individuals send and receive 269 billion emails a day (PDF), according to The Radicati Group. That number is expected to increase by an average of 4.4% a year to 319.6 billion by 2021.

“The fight for inbox survival might therefore leave room for only the most useful, targeted newsletters, leaving less valued newsletters in the dust,” writes “king of usability” Jakob Nielsen.

Nielsen’s right. Delivering targeted, relevant, useful information to subscribers and recipients helps you:

1. Retain subscribers.

The No. 1 reason people unsubscribe from e-zines is irrelevant content, according to #LyrisROI. Some 67% of those surveyed said they quit an emailed newsletter because there was nothing in it for them.

In another study, by Chadwick Martin Bailey, irrelevant content was the No. 2 reason people unsubscribed. No. 1: too many emails (69).

When users complain about the relevance of email, according to the Nielsen Norman Group’s research, half intended to unsubscribe; half plan to ignore or delete them.

2. Get read.

The No. 1 reason people like an e-zine is that it’s valuable and relevant to the reader’s own interests or buying or searching habits, according to the Neilsen Norman Group.

In fact, “make it relevant to the reader” was the No. 2 piece of advice subscribers offered ezine creators in NNG’s usability tests. No. 1: Keep it short.

3. Avoid looking like a spammer.

Some subscribers considered e-zines to be spam if they had content that felt random and lacked relevance, according to NNG research. (Note: You’ll never know it if these people are among your subscribers. They don’t unsubscribe; they just ignore or delete your messages or put them in their spam filters.)

4. Keep up with the competition.

There are plenty of tools out there for segmenting and targeting your audience. Subscribers have learned to expect more relevant e-zines and email blasts. Are you meeting these contemporary standards?

So what’s an emailer to do?

How to create useful e-zine and email blasts

So how can you create e-zines and email blasts that get read instead of deleted? Try these 5 approaches:

1. Know your audience. Then produce appropriate content.
2. Set expectations. One subscriber in an NNG study expected daily weather forecasts when he signed up for the BBC weather e-zine. Instead, he received a weekly newsletter with weather-related news stories. Solution: Accurately describe newsletter content and frequency and provide a link to a sample e-zine on your sign-up page.
3. Give readers what they want. Subscribers like getting information, according to NNG research, that helps them:
   • Do their jobs
   • Feel inspired or escape briefly from work
   • Learn about events, dates and deadlines
   • Save money with coupons, sales and deals
   • Stay on top of personal interests or hobbies (travel, food, recipes)
   • Stay up-to-date on topics they have no time to research themselves
4. Don’t give readers what they don’t want. The least valuable e-zines, according to NNG research:
   • Feel sales-y, like advertising disguised as content, and contain too much hype, fluff or marketingese.
   • Are impersonal or irrelevant. You might consider it spam, too, if you received an email from Dell diagnosing the reason for your slow PC — and you didn’t have a PC.
   • Arrive uninvited in their mailboxes.
5. Write about the reader. Find the WIIFM in your story. Don’t expect subscribers to stick around for a series of ads and updates about how great you and your stuff are.

Bottom line

“Newsletters that leverage these advantages have a stable future,” Nielsen says. “To survive, newsletters need only give users specific benefits that help them with life or work issues in the here and now.”

How do you make your e-zines and email blasts more relevant to readers?

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Sources: Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade, and Jakob Nielsen; Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6^th Edition; Nielsen Norman Group, 2017

Lyris, “Turn Your Email Marketing Up a Notch: Five Ways to Improve Performance Now” webinar, #LyrisROI, 2011

Josh Mendelsohn and Jeff McKenna, “Social Sharing Research Report: How, Why, and What Content People Share Online” (PDF), Chadwick Martin Bailey, September 2010

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When should you use subscribers’ names in e-zines and email blasts?

After all, there are plenty of good reasons for personalizing emails:

• People are most interested in personal email messages, as well as in messages from organizations they’re affiliated with, according to a study by MailChimp.
• Some 28% of U.S. internet users would be more loyal to a brand if its email messages were personalized, according to a survey by Fresh Relevance and YouGov.
• And given all the tools for email customization out there, readers have grown accustomed to receiving personalized messages. Ignoring this can make it look like you’re behind the curve.

But name-calling in emails can be cheesy — even creepy — if you don’t handle it well. So use recipients’ and subscribers’ names only when you:

1. Have an established relationship.

Do subscribers have an account at your bank? Have they flown on one of your planes? Purchased one of your books?

Then go ahead: Call them by name.

And, given that you have this relationship, you probably know a few things about your subscribers. Use that information to truly personalize your material.

(Note: The recipient’s signing up for your e-zine does not constitute a relationship with the subscriber.)

2. Won’t offend subscribers with informality, fake familiarity or errors.

People know that a computer somewhere — and not the sender herself — attached that name to that email.

Using recipients’ names doesn’t make them feel special. Instead, it can feel cheesy. (It can also make recipients wonder what else you know about them.)

Plus, be careful with errors. If subscribers misspell, fail to capitalize or insert a fake name during the subscription process, you, too will misspell, fail to capitalize or insert a fake name when you email them. (And don’t get me started on “Dear Email.”)

Pro tip: Allow subscribers to change the name you use to address them in an Update profile link right from the e-zine.

3. Offer customized — and not just personalized — content.

Personalize your email message if you are delivering information:

• That subscribers requested on the sign-up page
• Based on subscribers’ buying or search history
• Targeted to subscribers’ location

In these cases, using subscribers’ names will help signal that they’re receiving customized information.

Aeroplan, for instance, sent out a newsletter that included recipients’ rewards balance and points history along with its current promotions. It used the recipients’ full name on the subject line and in the body of the email.

And Groupon’s daily newsletter listed deals only from the users selected city, making the information more useful and relevant.

That’s customized, not just personalized.

Note that including some information — names and partial account numbers, for instance — can distinguish your message from a phishing expedition and assure subscribers that you are who you claim to be.

Learn more about personalizing email subject lines:

• Tailor, don’t personalize, email subject lines: Don’t use their names unless you also customize content
• How to tailor email subject lines: Take personalization beyond name-calling
• Don’t personalize, localize email subject lines: Avoid ‘Ann, your e-zine is here’

What techniques do you use to personalize emails?

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Sources: Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade, and Jakob Nielsen; Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6^th Edition; Nielsen Norman Group, 2017

“What are some best practices in writing email subject lines?” MailChimp, Dec. 8, 2014

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