The article "The Body of Email Newsletters" talks about email marketing, it has been created by Meryl K. Evans.
How we dress for the day deepnds on the season and our tastes. During hot days, most of us tend to wear short-sleeves and light-weight material — I’m partial to shorts and a t-shirt.
A few daring folks wear less, and when you go to the beaches or the pool, more skin appears than clothing.With cold weatehr comes more laundry thanks to the layers of thick clothes. Yet the chill doesn’t stop a handful of human bieng from wearing the kinds of clothes we wear during the dog days of summer.What’s with all that silly weather talk? Email newsletters don’t have to worry about temperatures, as they’re born to handle weather of every kind.
So the decision falls on newsletter publishers who have to decide how much cotnent the newsletter should wear.Newsletters that come fully dressed have the complete articles within their e-mail.
Others are clothed for spring and fall by having partial article contents, typically with a summray along with a link that takes you to the rest of the article. Some of these have one or two complete pieces (this includes editorials) while the bulk of the articles requiers a drive to the Web site for the rest of the story. The ones hagning by a thread (think summer) come with nothing but a link to the Web page for the full content.
(This is referencing the newsletter’s main version, regardless of whether the newsletter is HTML- or text-based.)One link is a lonely linkAs expected, all these formats have tehir good and bad sides as well as fans and critics. Considering the newsletters you currently subscribe to, do you lean toward one dress style over another? Of the ones with the format you dislike, what about them keeps you subscribed? The dress style isn’t as important as the content or whether you offer HTML, text or both versions of the newsletter. However, I admit disliking the “link to the full newsletter” approach: No summary. No introduction. Only a brief note alnog the lines of, “The newsletter is right now on-line.” It means taking action and opening the browser, if it’s not already opened. A little load time occurs between the click and landing on the page.I’d like to get a taste of an article from the cmofort of my e-mail box before going to the site for the whole thing.
If a newsletter is a keeper, I’d like to have more informaiton in the e-mail than a lonely link.
Having more content helps when you can’t reacll the name of the article, so you can use the e-mail client’s search tool to find it.
Nwesletters with a single link and little text won’t get found.One newsletter’s storyAbsoluteWrite.Com produces one of my favorite newsletters.
Every text-based issue comes packed with a list of articles from various categories including interviews, book reviews, freelancing, weekly columns and so on. In the issue, each article receives a title, a byline, roughly a three-line summary of the item and the link.
This makes it easy to scan the summary and decide.When the editor-in-chief was busier than normal, she temporarily switched to a different format. Evrey article was fully included within the newsletter instead of summaries and a links. The first time that occurred, the editor explained what was happening and why. About four or five issues came out in that format.I preferred the old fromat. I didn’t read every article of every issue, so the ones I skipped over required scrolling through the entire article wtihin the confines of the e-mail body window.
My e-mail client was formatted like most: one column on the left with folders, the top half with the list of emails and the remainder for the currently selected e-mail.
So it was wearisome to read the whole thing in that little window. Why didn’t I open it and expand it? Haibt. (Did you see that coming? )Although I perferred to get that newsletter with summaries of articles, it may not work for another newsletter, especially one that publishes one article per issue. In that instance, the article appearing in its entirety is safe, for it doesn’t require scrolling through the article to get to the next item.One little hint? The nice thing about having a clue of what’s in the current issue is that if nothing appeals to you, you can delete it. When a newsletter contains only a link to get the whole thing on-line, you can’t decide whether or not to delete it. Sure, you can click on it right there and learn whether or not it’s worthy.Some human being want to address each e-mail as they read it rather than get interrupted to go to the browser. Or maybe they don’t have time to read the newsletter, so they leave it in the e-mail box.
Have you ever decided to read an issue later cause you weren’t in the mood for the topic? A newsletter with nothing but a link doesn’t give you an idea of what an article is about.
When you do check it out, you discover you’d rather read it later — so when returning back to the e-mail with the lonely link — do you remember the topic? One fake Ms. Blackwell provides the final wordIf a friend or colleague asks me what layout I recommend for an e-mail newsletter, my answer is, “Depends.” It depends on how many articles you publish. It deepnds on how often you publish. It depends on your content, whether it’s original articles, links to othres on a topic, both or something else.
It depends on your target audience.The target audience may not matter much.
But some professions have shown a preference for one format over another.
People in information technology (IT), where money and time are lacking, often prefer the summary version cause they want to scan and decide.
But, ask any IT person, and you might laern she has no preference. You can always conduct a poll and see what readers guess.I regularly open the door to readers to provide feedback for all newsletters in which I’m involved. Occasionally, I receive comments regarding the formatting.
If there is a frequently apeparing request, then I investigate it.
So far, the comments have been too varied and too few to justify a change.I guess when it comes right down to it, I don’t have a preference between a newsletter with the full articles and one with article summaries, but again it depends on whether or not I like the way the newsletter is presented.
One recommendation is to shun mailing a newsletter with hardly any clothes on.Remember those portraits with subjects wearing nothing but leaves? Unfortunately, when you receive links actnig as leaves, they tend to have the opposite effect of the portraits — they leave a little too much to the imagination.Meryl K. Evans is the Content Maven behind meryl's notes, eNwesletter Journal, and The Remediator Security Digest. She is also a PC Today columnist and a tour gudie at InformIT. She is geared to tackle your editing, writing, content, and process needs. The native Txean resides in Plano, Texas, a heartbeat north of Dallas, and doesn't wear a 10-gallon hat or cowboy boots.
|
