‘If you can’t write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don’t have a clear idea.’
~David Belasco

How long is too long for an email campaign? Well the short answer definitely is ’It depends’. Some campaigns are really long but they and work well and win awards for it. Some campaigns are short and sweet and they work well and win awards for it. The key is to have an interesting, relevant, engaging, well designed email. If you include too much content that is not relevant or interesting you are likely to lose people,or overwhelm people unless you have a really gripping campaign with good design, good copy and is relevant to the audience.

Here are some reasons why long emails may not work:
If it’s not interesting you will lose people’s attention and they will delete it
If you take too long to get to the point, people will delete it before you get there
If it takes too much time to read you will lose people and they will delete it
If there is too much information that isn’t relevant to your recipients they will delete it

How do you know if your email makes the grade?  Check out this blog post

Here are some pointers to keep in mind:
Make it clear what the email is about – make your point clearly and make it early
Make it clear what you want people to do – have an obvious call to action
Keep it relevant – Consider sending different emails to segments of your database, with each email targeted towards a specific audience
Keep it timely – keep the amount of articles or bits of information to 7 at the most. Even better, 4 or 5 is short and punchy yet informative.

TIP: If you have lots of information to share, it is sometimes better to send more frequently and include less content – that way you remain fresh in people’s minds and you don’t bombard them with too much information in one go.

Click here to read an article on email best practice guidelines and examples.

Here are some key things to focus on for your next campaign:
1) The right content – make sure your design, coding and content all follow good practice guidelines
2) At the right time – don’t underestimate having a timely content and call to action
3) The right audience – target your email and the content to a specific audience so that it’s relevant to them

TIP: Ask yourself these three questions about your email campaign:
1) Who is it from?
2) What’s in it for me
3) What do I do now?

If you can’t answer these questions yourself by looking at your email, you can bet that your recipients won’t be able to either. So for your next campaign, remember to keep it relevant to the audience, have a good balance of  images to capture attention with gripping copy that makes people read on…

Would you like Jericho to review your email design? Talk to us now