From: Enewsletter Marketing Insights (Emi)- July 2006 issue.
Summary: If your eNewsletter is going to B2B recipients, the core tactic is to make your eNewsletter as easy as possible for your readers to quickly scan through. This calls for rethinking content format and layout. See how to here...
How To Design Your eNewsletter For Quick Reading Complete article.
There are some aspects of writing and setting up enewslettersthat can challengeproducers. For example -- studies we have seen indicate that about 19% of those who open a letter read it thoroughly. In a way this is good because it means that the publishers are getting into the minds of a large number of those who get the letters.
But we are eternally dissatisfied. We always want to do better. So, do we shorten our letters and make them more terse to have greater impact on the 81% who only scan the letters? If we do this do we sacrifice the personal tone of the letter that can make readers feel like they know the writer?
To further complicate this matter, a recent study reported that the feeling of personal relationship with the writer of the enewsletters is a strong reason for recipients to keep reading each new issue.
Well, the answer lies in making the copy of the main message as easy to assimilate as possible. That means short paragraphs, explanatory subheads and more bullet point text in lieu of solid text pragraphs.
It also means that there should be a very brief recap of the main message somewhere at the beginning of the letter. Then, if those who open the letter go no farther, they still get the gist of the message.
You see, we keep thinking ... we keep thinking ... we keep thinking. And I doubt that we will ever get to the point of smug satisfaction with our work.
Blogs - Powerhouse Electronic Communications If you think this is going to be a commercial for blogs, you are quite right.
It was not too long ago that when we mentioned blogs, people would say, "Blogs - what's that?" But by now most people in business know what blogs are and have read or heard stories about the huge audiences that they can draw.
In addition to readership, blogs have another powerful effect. They allow instant communication between the reader and the blog publisher. This quickly establishes a connection between seller and prospective buyer.
But blogs are not just for those seeking large audiences. They can also be effective for businesses that target a very small audience. The attraction here is that you do not have the high up-front costs of production that are required with printed mailings - costs that those reaching a large audience are able to amortized over a large audience. So, business that only want to reach a limited audience will find blogs to be the most efficient way to do it.
We do commercial blogs - and you are reading one of them right now. If you would like professional guidance and turnkey set up, leave us a message. OK?
Look again carefully at the headline. We said "scan" not "scam."
This is to make the point that studies show that most recipients of enewsletters don't read them - they scan them. We who produce enewsletters like to think that every golden word we write is read attentively. But scanners go over the letter in a different manner. They graze over the content and if the impression they get is that it has worth, they will read it more carefully.
So, the challenge is to grab them when they first enter the letter. This can be done in the way magazine publishers use highlight statements - usually in a block or box. These highlights present a sentence (or a quote from the letter) that is the crux of the subject matter.
Yes, you can grab those visitors to your letter and entice them into reading most of the content if you utilize this technique.
