/Culture/ Create the perfect newsletter
13/01/2009 | Filed under Discover > Culture
Unloved, badly presented and wallowing in the nearest spam folder, the email newsletter is too often the poor relation of online marketing. But it doesn’t have to be that way, says Paul Wyatt
With a glut of email newsletters piled up in our inboxes, it becomes a knee-jerk response to hit the delete key. Yet twinkling away among the three-for- two offers and ‘Click me, for God’s sake, click me!’ missives are newsletters that shine.
These gems know us. They entice. Smart, witty, attractive and compelling, they stand out like beacons of sanity in the dirge that email marketing has become. So let’s celebrate the good in the hope of transforming the bad. Creating the ultimate newsletter is what we should be aiming for when a brief for one comes our way.
Your first instinct may be to jump into Photoshop and create a layout. However you need to consider who you’re sending the newsletter to, what you want to achieve and how to create copy that fits the brand’s tone.
Objectives first
As community manager for ITV’s X-Factor website, Rebecca Cryan was responsible for the show’s newsletter production. “Email marketing can be much improved by more effective information gathering,” she explains. “Factors such as age, sex and interests ensure that newsletters reaching people’s inboxes are specific to them and their lifestyle.”
This ‘plan first/be creative later’ approach is echoed by Phil Ryan, head of digital for Four Communications. “We like to look purely at the objectives first. Some clients will fixate on the creative but we like to take a step back and review what they want to achieve with the email in the first place.”
Of course, something everyone wants to achieve is high open rates. Effective planning can go a long way to help a newsletter gain the recipient’s attention.
The interactive team at Fremantle Media had the task of creating HTML and plain text newsletters to support BBC1’s The Apprentice. This required careful planning and a thorough understanding of the show’s demographic. “In the planning stages, we had the target users very much in mind when trying to create a compelling piece of communication,” explains interactive producer Oliver Davies.
Fremantle Media had also produced email newsletters for other reality TV shows such as X-Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, but The Apprentice appealed to an older demographic. “For this reason, we decided to produce something that was more content-rich and took longer to consume than other, more visual styles,” says Davies. They dubbed the tone ‘Apprentice snacking’. If the recipient didn’t have the time to click through to the main site, there would still be something substantial to satisfy their Apprentice fix.
Content is king
Understanding your audience also means your copy should be relevant to them. Do some research, then put yourself in your audience’s shoes and write for them. “It needs to be enticing,” says Guardian writer and content specialist Claire Foot. “Keep your content short, sharp and sexy. Don’t lose readers by giving them irrelevant content.”
There are many ways to engage with the user and offer them a clear reason to continue their path to your site. “‘What happened next’ text works,” says Claire Foot. “For example, ‘What was Posh Spice doing in this shop?’ (as a clickable link) or ‘Find out how to win a dream trip’. Link to the relevant part of your site. Don’t make readers click to your homepage and then work to find the content you’re promoting. Make it easy.” She also believes you should really get under the skin of your intended recipients. “Use the language of your audience to really engage them,” she explains. “Make it chatty but not patronising and have the tone sit comfortably with the product.”
Rebecca Cryan agrees. “Poor content can’t be saved by a clever design later,” she says. “An email may look slick and sophisticated but if it’s got nothing to say, why would anybody want to read it? Copy counts. Take time to perfect the pace and tone of your newsletter.”
The amount of text you use is also a decision based on who your intended audience is. A newsletter for a television series such as The Apprentice can be more text-heavy, as it’s appealing to an older audience who are more likely to spend a longer time interacting with it.
Mark Bulley, web producer for Square Enix, has produced graphically rich newsletters for Final Fantasy VII and Dragon Quest. He believes his younger audience requires more visuals and less text: “We try to deliver a dynamic message in fewer words,” he says.
Subject lines
In a crowded inbox, a newsletter needs to stand out. It needs a subject line that makes you want to open it and a trusted ‘sent from’ address. These seemingly simple decisions can make or break a piece of email marketing. “Subject lines are absolutely important, in the same way that a company slogan or advertising strap line is,” says Oliver Davies. “It has to be short, snappy, and ‘juicy’. The user’s got to be intrigued.”
Paul Herbert, digital resources director at Random House, says competition-based incentives and topical content work well. “We get our best click-through rates with online competitions and exclusive offers,” he says. “It’s also important to be relevant and newsworthy. When Ian McEwan won the Galaxy Book of the Year Award 2008, our registrants had an email sitting in their inbox within half an hour.”
Camilla Chapman is digital marketing manager for Eve magazine and is responsible for its online version, the eveWeekend.com newsletter. This highly successful newsletter combines calls to action in subject lines with deadlines and countdowns to increase the urgency and encourage people to open it.
Emails are often deleted when a recipient is concerned about their source, and Camilla Chapman stresses the importance of using your company’s name in the ‘from’ line for this reason. “You see a lot of emails with a ‘from’ name like ‘admin’ or ‘newsletter’,” she points out. “With my current campaigns, the ‘from’ name is always ‘eveWeekend’ and the email address is mailto:news@eveweekend.com. This keeps it logical and consistent.”
Producing the design
Once you’ve finalised your content and subject line, it’s time to start thinking about design. What may surprise you when building an HTML newsletter is that their production can appear quite antiquated. This is largely due to email client compatibility. “Table structure achieves the best results in all email clients,” explains Paul Herbert. “Text and background colours must be chosen carefully, because not all email clients will translate colour in the way that you expect.”
“The code has to be effectively self- contained,” notes Oliver Davies. “With no references to external style sheets or JavaScript functions, lots more inline styling is required.”
Most email clients have a ‘preview pane’, which can usually be found below or to the right of the list of emails. When this pane sits below the email list you have on average around 400 pixels of the newsletter’s content visible before you have to scroll below the email fold or click it open to reveal all the content. This 400 pixel-space is the most important area for promoting your content. “Always present the content title in the largest font and matching the main subject title,” advises design and usability consultant Tim Baker. “Any further copy or content areas should be indented. Less haze will keep the reader on your page. Usability tests show that the average reader only scans content. You have about two seconds to capture attention. Certain areas of the screen are hotspots for focus, namely the top and right-hand sides.”
It’s also a good idea to offer an alternate version of the newsletter via a web link. Even after rigorous testing, if an email client still manages to mangle your newsletter, this link helps ensure recipients see your messaging.
To see the message in the first place requires a newsletter sign-up on the email originator’s site. This could be combined with an area containing a ‘sample’ newsletter as an enticement to sign up.
When signing up for a newsletter, this process should be as clear as possible. The Apprentice’s website streamlined this process. A name and email address was entered, then an option selected to sign up or unsubscribe. There then followed a choice of formats of email: plain text or HTML. Keeping the process fuss-free guarantees you more sign-ups.
The unsubscribe process should also not be forgotten. Tim Baker explains: “If enough people assign your newsletter to their junk folders, it can be blocked from ISPs entirely. So if some people are going to unsubscribe, make sure they can do it via your own system. Place a clear link at the foot of your page and make the task as simple as possible.”
Email distribution companies
With content and design finalised, next on the list is sending the newsletter out. Most firms employ a mail communication company to send out the emails, manage the email lists and provide feedback on open rate and click-through data. “Your distribution company must have good relationships with ISPs and free mail providers and be whitelisted,” Camilla Chapman advises. “It should at all times keep your lists clean. It’s no good being told you have a list of 100,000 email addresses when only 15,000 of them actually work.”
Your distribution company also needs to monitor your emails continually to spot problems with delivery, analyse open rates by domain and spot bounce-back emails.
Random House opted for an in-house distribution solution. A costly outlay at first, but one that had paid for itself within two years in comparison to a web-based ASP (Application Service Provider) solution.
“We chose an in-house system solution so that we could have greater control,” explains Paul Herbert. “Instead of paying for each email, all of our campaigns are essentially free to send. The unit-cost aspect of ASP solutions are a disincentive to growth, whereas we have no financial considerations when deciding upon a campaign.”
Random House is not alone. Having initially looked at mail communication companies, Square Enix decided that, in the long term, it would be more beneficial to develop an in- house system that could be tailored to their organisational and development needs. “This has been a huge benefit, as it’s allowed us to cut the costs of sending a campaign mail,” says Mark Bully.
It’s time to become serious about email newsletters again. They should be jewels in the online marketing crown, not poor relations. Having read this far, you’ll already know more than most of the makers of those lowly, spam-invested newsletters. With your enticing copy, great intuitive design and a supportive distribution company/in-house solution in place, your ultimate newsletter is now ready to meet its audience. So go and paint the inboxes of the world with well designed, compelling and thoroughly fascinating content.
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Comments
Jeanine / 15/01/2009 / 07:25 / http://www.health-outlook.com
I agree that subject lines are extremely important. I quickly delete newsletters that don't have an appealing subject line. I usually scan the newsletter quickly and if it has good content I keep reading. It only takes me a few seconds to know if I want to keep reading or not.
Jon / 15/01/2009 / 10:46
Both companies in this article mention that they decided to bring their email marketing in-house but there is no mention of what software they used.
I am currently looking to update our email marketing systems and it would be really useful to know what software was chosen and why.
Jon Harvey / 15/01/2009 / 17:42 / http://Code Required
I disagree with Tim Baker somewhat about where to place the unsubscribe link... to truly "encourage" people to use your unsubscribe link it should be available in clear space at the top of the email newsletter as well. (along side a link to a web version of the email so that those who do get a mashed version can still see your intended content clearly)
Bill Lowden / 16/01/2009 / 12:16 / http://www.delightfulwebdesign.net
Great post! I've been considering a news letter for a while. This is the most comprehensive tutorial I have seen so far. Thanks
Guy / 19/01/2009 / 11:57 / http://www.squeezymail.co.uk
I use Squeezymail, it is really cool as you can easily upload and manage your own designs, cheapest i have found around too.
www.squeezymail.co.uk
Liz / 19/01/2009 / 12:39
Email brand value is becoming increasingly more important as our inboxes become battle grounds in their own right. It's not just email clients such as Outlook that need to be considered (the fact that Outlook 2007 doesn't show background images is an absolute nightmare) but mobile phones as a device to check emails. If I don't recognise the sender or find the subject line appealing on my mobile - it's deleted - simple as. It's a split second decision. We need to build up a relationship with our email recipients - putting as much time and effort into creating and writing content as we would if it were a magazine article or advert in a national that cost thousands of pounds.
The notion that 'emailing is cheap' often gets reflected in content, and that's wrong. You get out what you put in. Email isn't a magic tool that suddenly increases sales, done badly it can cause damage to your brand and your business - losing customers if you annoy them, send them incorrect information and so on.
I use Squeezymail in house, spend a decent amount of time constructing the email, writing content, making sure my subscriber list is up to date - and my subscribers know they aren't going to get an email every week - they expect one every month - that's about right for us. Expectation and value - that's the key!
steve / 03/02/2009 / 22:17 / http://www.sievingnectar.com
I'd be interested to hear of any more software that people have used..
wiredraven / 05/02/2009 / 10:03
Does the Spam Act 2003 not require that an unsubscribe link MUST be supplied?
I've been using MailChimp, http://www.mailchimp.com/index.phtml which I think is well worth a mention.
Dirt cheap, easy to use and it has a lot of very clever bits and bobs in there. Email campaigns created from RSS feeds and now reporting can be tied into Google analytics offering ROI on your e-commerce site. It has certainly given me plenty to explore this past couple of months.
I'm off to have a look at squeezymail, many thanks Liz!
Ronnie Stretch / 08/02/2009 / 13:09 / http://www.themarketingpractice.com
I work for the #1 B2B agency in the UK - and our email newsletters have taken a major hit over the last year. With the introduction of Outlook 2007- which has taken email marketing back about 5 years - we have had to become more clever in how we put our information across.
One of the simplest tests we have done recently is to see which is more effective - html or plain text. Normally we wouldn't dream of using a plain-text email for a newsletter, however some testing we completed recently tells us otherwise. We sent out two emails of the same newsletter - the plain text one was read about 20% more than the html version. When we asked a few of our clients why this was, they simply said content. They commented that they recieve so many 'pretty' emails that half the time they just delete them straight away - assuming them to nothing more than junk. With the plain text versions, strangly, they actually read them because the text drew them in.
I would therefore recommend that if you are doing a layout in html - keep it simple and uncluttered. I'm not saying keep all your emails to plain-text as that would be too drastic, but too brash graphics and strange layouts just dont work within the B2B community.
Pip Stevens / 16/02/2009 / 11:32
This is a good article, I've found that email newsletters are so restrictive, from a creative point of view. You would think that email providers would be making systems better for showing emails but no, things seem to be going in reverse. It's a mixture of science and art form, getting the email newsletter right.
For our customer, she is interested in the visual, in snappy strap lines, attention grabbing calls-to-action and celeb imagery.
The use of tables restricts the creative a little but copy is key, a really good subject line hits the spot but that all depends on what's in the email, do you have a product out that is going to be a good seller? are you holding a promotion/competition? we've seen that personalising the email works well in opening rates.
Give the reader as much opportunity as possible to click through to something, make it relevant, make it interesting to your target, try not to have broken links and yes it is a legal requirement to have an unsubscribe button.
We have all our legal bumff at the bottom of the email below our footer which is another thing that is useful...a header and a footer, these give your email (if it is a regular newsletter) a consistant look and feel, something that the user will become accustom to. We use ours to hold links through to pages of the site and to our social network pages. The header mimics the website navigation so users get to know the site and the brand through the newsletter and gives them ample opportunity to access all areas of the webstie without having to seek it out. Also, use your reader to advertise for you and build your database, place a "Forward to a friend" and a "Click here to regularly receive the newsletter" button somewhere to ensure their friends can easily sign up.
Emma / 18/07/2009 / 02:49 / http://www.auntyflo.com
Thanks for such an interesting article - I always find newsletters a long winded process so your points will help me. I am currently using e-circle at work and find that to improve click through rates it is important to showcase the content at the front of the newsletter. As you said content is king and I know some companies often send out one newsletter a week and it is sometimes hard to engage the reader for a long period of time. Thanks again for all the great tips.
Presentwise / 05/08/2010 / 11:59 / http://Www.presentwise.co.uk
Fantastic article. I currently use an online email service as my number of subscribers is relatively low, but I can see the advantage of bringing it in house once you get above a certain volume.
