Mailchimp's Key Areas to Focus on So Emails Get Read
No one wants to spend time crafting an email that will be ignored. Learn these best practices gleaned from Mailchimp’s Content Optimizer to get your audience to actually read the emails you send out.
Email marketing has become increasing more important as social media marketing and other forms of marketing are becoming more volatile. Mailchimp has recently unveiled its Content Optimizer which goes through the emails that you’ve sent out and gives you feedback on them so you can improve next time. The only problem is, you have to wait until after the email has been sent out in order to find out how it did. I’ve put together the four factors that Mailchimp evaluates emails with in this blog post. Although there are a myriad of criteria that Mailchimp’s Content Optimizer uses, I’ll summarize the main points here.
That said, there is definitely a school of thought in marketing circles that when you’re sending out an email from a personal brand that it should not have much formatting at all, so it looks like it’s from a friend. That people can turn off when they open an email and it’s all fancy and branded. These recommendations are for a less text-heavy kind of email for sure, and are based on Mailchimp’s exhaustive research from years of looking at small business emails.
What’s going to work for your brand? Try it. Test it. Tweak it. See what your audience responds to. That said, you can use this as a jumping off point.
1. Skimmability
According to my spell check, “skimmability” may not actually be a word. But you can understand that it’s how easily an email can be read. When someone opens your email, can they scan through it while they’re standing in line at the grocery store? Will it be clear what you are asking the reader to do? Here are some ways to improve skimmability according to Mailchimp’s Content Optimizer:
Avoid large words
Avoid long sentences
Less than 200 words
Large words may look impressive, but when people are reading fast, they want to know what you mean right away. Shorter words are often less jargon-y and will get your point across easier.
Reader often lost the thread with long sentences. Keeping them short will make your work clearer.
I wish that Mailchimp had a word count function so you could check how many words your email clocks in at before pushing send. What you can do is copy and paste the text of the email into a Google Doc and then using the Word Count function under Tools. If you need to lower your word count, try some of the tricks in this blog post about copywriting.
2. Text and Visuals
How your emails look is important to whether or not they are easy to read. Here are some criteria that Mailchimp’s Content Optimizer uses when looking at an email’s visuals.
Used at least one image
Headings contained 8 or fewer words
Subheadings contained fewer than 30 words
Again, there is the school of thought that believes you shouldn’t use any visuals at all. But there is something nice about including one image in your email. It does help to convey the information faster.
And once again, brevity is helpful in both your headings and subheadings in making it easier for your audience to skim through.
3. CTAs and Links
CTAs (Calls to Action) are the buttons on the email that get them to RSVP, or get tickets, or buy now, or learn more. Mailchimp’s Content Optimizer recommends that an email should:
Include at least one link
Have at least one CTA
1 or more social links
Many organizations are hesitant to put clear CTAs. Although I find the problem is that they have too many. It’s better to put out more emails with less calls to action than more calls to action and less emails. Each email has a clear ask and your audience doesn’t get lost.
A word about social links: use them sparingly. Just because you have social media accounts on a few different platforms doesn’t mean that you have to point your audience towards them all. Choose them strategically. It will give your reader less links to click, and you will build your audience on the specific platform you’re hoping to grow.
4. Typography
The final category that the Mailchimp Content Optimizer uses is Typography. It evaluates, among other things the fonts, styles, and sizes of your text on the page. Best practices show:
Subheadings all are at least 16 px
Headings are at least 18 px
This is where less is more. Less bold, less italic, less sizes and styles. All of this helps to make a clean, consistent look and feel to your email. It also gives it more of a professional polish.
Optimize Your Email Content
Whether or not you have Mailchimp, you can still take advantage of the best practices that have been put forth in their Content Optimizer. And you can do it before you send out your email. Of course, if you are currently a Mailchimp user, you’ll be able to look at reports from the emails that you’ve already sent out and find out specifically which of these best practices you’re currently using.
To up your email marketing game, schedule an Intro Call so we can discuss how better to use this important channel to communicate with your audience.
