Do You
Want Your E-mail Newsletters to Be Read? Then Change Your Format!
by: BL Ochman 
Now that every other
site has a newsletter, one thing is perfectly clear: most of them never
get read. And that's more often caused by bad format than bad content.
An e-mailed newsletter
has about 10 seconds to present a useful message quickly, vibrantly, and
attractively. And it needs to make its message clear in the first screen.
How many e-mailed newsletters do that now? Almost none.
Don't
Waste The First Screen
The first screen of
an e-mail newsletter is as important as the first screen of a web site:
it's the most valuable real estate online. If you don't instantly let
people know what's in it for them when they look at your newsletter it's
likely to be zapped into the Trash folder. It won't be read it unless
it looks worth the time scrolling and reading would take.
Why then, do 99 out
of 100 e-mailed newsletters use the first screen and more of their email
to give a long-winded message about the opt-in nature of the list, a welcome
to new subscribers, the droll musings of the publisher, silly borders
and an advertising message or two?
One has to really want
to read a newsletter to scroll past all that padding get to the issue's
table of contents. And then the contents rarely summarize the articles
or make them click-able.
Tips
for Better Readability
What can you do to make
your newsletter one of the very few that actually gets read?
a. Write and re-write your greeting until you get it down to one
short line.
b. You don't need to put information on how to unsubscribe at the
top of the page. People who want to opt out will scroll until they find
the way to bid you adieu forever.
c. Skip the whimsical borders.
d. Start the list of articles "In This Issue" immediately
after your one-line greeting.
e. Keep the column width to approximately 65 characters. It is
too difficult to read wider columns on an e-mail screen, which generally
is only a portion of the entire monitor.
f. Concentrate on creating compelling content. It is consistently
helpful, interesting content that keeps people reading an online newsletter.
g. Use original material, not articles that have already appeared
in 10 other newsletters.
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