I love Howards Storage world… a place for everything and everything in its
place. So, I signed up to their eNewsletter recently.
Therefore, it was with some excitement to see in my Inbox:
From: Howards Storage World
Subject: Spring Clean
Ignoring all of my other important emails, I clicked on this to bring the
message up in my preview pane (I use Outlook 2007 with my preview pane at the
bottom).
This is what I saw…
Frowning slightly at the fact that there was nothing of interest in the preview
pane and the it looked out of whack, I persevered and scrolled down to see what
I could see…
Not much more.
Now, getting a tad bit frustrated I decided to open it anyway just to check it
out…
Yes, that’s right about 1/3 of the email was about nothing – just images and
poorly aligned “stuff”.
You may ask, why is this a problem?
- It’s generally accepted that around 40% of subscribers will have imagesturned off or their email clients don’t render images particularly well (one source says this is more like 65%). This means the email could have looked much worse to about 40% of Howards Storage World subscribers. They would have seen nasty red crosses for 1/3 of the email.
- Moreover, if some of their audience has a preview pane to the right, it would have looked BLANK.
- If someone without a wide screen had opened it, again it would have looked BLANK.
- In addition, I had to scroll down TWICE to actually get to the offer – the only reason I persevered and didn’t delete it, is because I couldn’t believe they’d done this.
- Heaven help them if a sizable portion of their audience gets their email on a handheld device…
The upshot:
- Don’t assume that just because your email looks good in your Inbox when you test it then it will look the same for your subscribers.
- Be aware of email design standards to allow for various email client settings (check out the email standards project: http://www.email-standards.org/).
- Test your email across different email clients and with different settings before sending.
- Don’t rely too heavily on images to tell your story.
- Make sure your subscribers don’t have to go hunting for the offer – get it in front of them early on, not everyone reads to the bottom of an email.
Guest Writer Angela Schuster owns and runs Schuster Consulting Group www.schusterconsulting.com.au
