E-Mailers: Sweet or Spam

Any E-mailer essentially needs to be looked from the three main components of any Mail; From, Subject and Body.

‘From’ must be able to connect directly with the user. More than 50% of the Emailers that I recieve have “the company.” as the from component. Uniformity in this aspect is important to the usres. It is always better to use the From part as the begining of the engagement.
For example; you can have a different set of emailes that go out on a regular basis and hence rather than having ‘From:itcombine.com’ all the time you can have varients like ‘Itcombine deals’ or ‘Itcombine schedules’ to start the communication with the user.

‘Subject’ must have a message that is clear and concise and short. It must also be relevant to the call-to-action in your email.
For example; using a subject line ‘3 books for 399′ is better than using ‘offers on books’

‘Body’ of the emailer is where the soul is. It is important for the marketing and the production team alike, to know about the factors that go into increasing the impact of the mailer and thereby the propensity to clik on the call for action. Following factors need to be kept in mind:

• Make sure that the design is catchy and sweet
• Maintain a clear hierarchy of message
• Make the call-to-action conspicous
• Maintain a balance between the amount of text and images in your email
• Create a simple layout that is free from complex tables
• Videos etc must lead to a landing page through a call-to-action button
• Keep the copy easy with simple short sentances
• Create HTML emails as they have the ability to display images (remember the alt tags)
• Leave an option for the reciever to click on a link to Contact You or Unsubscribe.

Further you can also use information on reading pattern by users from sources like trustpass.info that suggest that the mailers must be desinged in a “F” pattern.
Users first read in a horizontal movement (the upper part of the content area i.e the F’s top bar)
Users then move down the page and read across in a second horizontal movement covering a shorter area than the previous movement(the F’s lower bar).
Finally, users view the content’s left side in a vertical movement (the F’s stem)

I will try to list out the Mailing tools in a different post.