If you are a list marketer, you probably already know that your bread and butter comes from all the people clicking on the links in your email messages. When they do click on the links in your email, they can sign up for all sorts of stuff, buy things or visit certain sites. Every time they sign up for something, eventually, dollars will appear in your bank account. This is all pretty straightforward. This is why you’re in the game and this is why you must care about this question: does formatting increase email conversions?
The problem
The problem most of the time is that a lot of list marketers assume that list marketing is all about substance. To a certain extent, I would even agree with that. But the problem is, people also pay attention to format of your email. That’s right. Not only do people judge a book by its cover, but often times, they only have time to look at the cover and that’s it.
The moment they see your email and think to themselves that it is going to be a hassle to read, they’re going to shut down and move to another email. They’re not going to be interested and they’re going to move on to the next email in their inbox. Eventually, they will delete your email and possibly unsubscribe without even reading it properly.
Making long emails a habit
In fact, if you make a habit out of sending hard to read “wall of text” emails, your mailing list members are just going to ignore your email or unsubscribe quickly. What you end up doing is you train them to be scared of your email. They start to think that it’s too much of a commitment to read your updates, so noone reads them anymore.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that they think it’s worthless. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they think you don’t know what you’re doing ant talking about. Instead, they feel that they just don’t have the time and will to actually read all your stuff. Accordingly, they would not delete your email, but resolve to read it later.
Which almost never happens, they never get around to doing that because they’re too busy. See the pattern?
Fact: Email opens are Crucial
It’s really crucial to get your subscribers to open your emails. But you also have to be careful as to the format you’re using. It really would suck for you to put in all this time, effort and energy coming up with killer headlines that get opened time and time again and then nothing.
The problem is, once people open your long email, you fail to deliver the right message because they see an intimidating wall of text. They feel that reading this stuff is going to be a chore, it’s going to be too much of a hassle. They don’t have the time for that.
The Solution
So what do you need to do? How do you deliver properly? How do you get them to see your affiliate links inside your emails so their actions can make you money? We can’t give you any “work-for-everyon” recipe, but here are some tips.
Keep it Short
The first thing that you need to do is to write short emails. When your average list member receives your update and they see that your email has a lot of white space and the email itself is generally short, they are in the right frame of mind. They’re not intimidated, they’re not scared, they’re not under the impression that reading through your materials would take something out of them or take something away from their schedule. So they’ll read it in a few seconds.
Keep it Simple and To the Point
One of the best things that you can do when writing emails is to work with tight space constraints. This prevents you from beating around the bush too much. This also prevents you from saying ten words when just two words would do the same. And it also prevents you from using $10 words when 25 cent words will do the job quite well.
Keep it simple and keep it focused on the point you need your subscribers to see. You’re sending email updates for a reason. That reason better be about adding value to the lives of the recipients. Keep it at that level and you’re on a good way.
Plain Formatting Kills Reader Intimidation
I understand that there are all sorts of email systems out there that enable you to put in all sorts of fancy formatting through templates and HTML emails. This is very tempting because a lot of people are under the impression that if the message looks nice and fancy, people would love it better. This is not necessarily the case.
Let’s mention it again, people are busy. Instead of beauty, they’re looking for value. They’re looking for ideas, information or other value. When you format in a very plain way, the focus is on the idea or the information contained by your email. It becomes a payload.
Do yourself a big favor and kill the intimidation of your reader by sticking to plain formatting, regardless of the other fancy formatting options available at your disposal and your autoresponder.
Give Yourself a Better Shot at Getting a Link Click
Unfortunately, nobody is able to give you that shot. You’ll have to do it yourself. You’ll have to run all sorts of tests to your mailing list, all the way until you find the right kind of formatting and message length that would maximize your link clicks each and every time.
Unlike many infos you here, there is no magic formula here. Somebody might be running their own list and they might be doing well with a fairly long email messages, they should of course stick with that. You, on the other hand, might have a list whose membership might prefer something shorter and more basic. So you have to focus on what works for you.
Unfortunately, this is one piece of information that you have to find out for yourself, as you will only discover this information through actual experience. So test, test, test.
Autoresponders
All of them out there can overwhelm you with abundance of templates, themes and colors. There are a few exceptions that focus on short text emails, like MyMailIt, although even they use a standard WYSIWYG editor, so you can actually do what you want. Check out the autoresponder you’re using for help and trainings, and you’ll soon know the possibilites.
I simply cannot go past what I said above: be very careful with designs at your disposal. Unless you’re absolutely sure your audience loves colorful messages, it’s way better to stick with short, clean messages with focus.
You might also like:
- Try This Simple Trick to Explode Your Email CTR
- A free Modern Email Marketing Cheatsheet
Recent Comments