Not all email newsletters are created equal.
You can make yours stand out by integrating multimedia — using pictures, videos, and other types of interactive elements. But, incorporating different types of media is not enough. You must to do it right to make your efforts worthwhile.
More and more small businesses and nonprofits are incorporating pictures and videos to engage their email readers. Unfortunately, that also means more and more small businesses and nonprofits are incorporating pictures and videos the wrong way.
Delight your email readers by avoiding these all-too-common mistakes:
1. Too Many Images
Images capture attention immediately and do a great job of bringing your readers in. However, using too many images can have an adverse effect. It distracts from the message itself, but it can also prevent people from actually reading your email. Keep in mind that one large image isn’t the solution either. If your image is too large, it can take a while to load on a mobile device, or even worse, it can load and then the user may have to scroll from left to right to view the whole thing. Standard smartphone screens are 320–480 pixels wide, so make sure your images do not exceed that.
Instead of cutting back on the size or number of images used in your email, direct readers to an online album on a site like Facebook, Flickr or Picassa. This way, people can see the images and engage with your message without the images distracting from the real purpose of your email.
2. Embedding Videos
The amount of videos being created and consumed is growing. Unfortunately, so are the common mistakes surrounding videos. Often, they’re embedded in the body of an email. In many cases, that means they get blocked by a spam filter, or the video isn’t even displayed because the user has images turned off. If an email never sees the inbox, then your customer will never see the email. If the email does make it past the spam filter, embedding the video means you’ll have no way of knowing who has watched it.
Instead of embedding a video, include a screenshot and make that picture a clickable link to your video. Not only does inserting your video as a link get you past spam filters, but you can also track how many times that video was clicked on and by whom. This vital information tells you what topics your audience is interested in and wants to hear more about.
3. Too Much Content.
A great way to add compelling content to your email is to feature a blog post that you wrote, or perhaps an interesting post that someone else wrote. However, pasting the entire post into your email does more harm than good. Email readers are scanning for relevant content that’s interesting to them. A full blog post will make your email too long and you’ll have no way to tell if anyone read it.
Why not insert part of the blog post (a paragraph or two) and include a link to the full post? This serves two great purposes: It makes it easier for your readers to scan your email and find the content they’re looking for, and you can see how many times people clicked on the link to the post. And, by inserting just the first paragraph of a few blog posts, your audience has more topics to choose from. Then, when you check your reporting data, you can easily see which of those topics people like best, and which ones you can skip next time.
Make Your Emails Even Better
By using pictures, videos, and blog posts correctly, you can collect valuable information about your customers likes and dislikes … information you can use to make your next email even better!
Guy Steeves delivers Free Email & Social Media Marketing seminars for small business and non-profits in BC: http://conta.cc/cbC3Ui or for more on Supercharging Your Facebook business page: http://www.constantcontact.com/social-campaigns/index.jsp