It’s easy to get comfortable in a content managing position. It can become pretty routine, putting out content on certain days of the week, testing it, and repeating the process. But when routine supercedes creativity, and you start to base your work on assumptions instead of facts, things can get dicey. Here are some assumptions comfortable content creators make about their email marketing that need to be challenged:
You assume now they want to read a wall of text. You can safely assume they’re gonna skim it.
When writing content for emails, it’s hard to stay objective. The longer you write, and the more words you put down, the more attached to the program you become. But even if you love the 1,400 word letter you just wrote like your own child, just remember: your email is most likely going to be one of several, if not dozens, of emails your readers get every day. No matter how good your content is, follow Kurt Vonnegut’s advice: keep it simple. Make your copy skimmable, and you’ll find that the retention and conversion of your emails goes through the roof.
You assume now they will read it when they can. You should assume that it’s better to be part of their routine.
It’s nice sometimes to have the flexibility of being a content writer. Any time of day, you can sit down at a desk and churn out another article, a cup of coffee by your side. Unfortunately, not everyone’s schedule is so flexible. Some people check their email just once per day, and that means you’re not just writing for a business - you’re becoming part of a routine for people around the world. Maintaining a consistent content calendar creates loyalty in your customers, and brand loyalty is a huge building block of any long-term business.
You assume people check emails on their desktops. You should know that's probably not the case.
You write all your content on a laptop or desktop, a wide-screened format that fits everything very cleanly across the whole screen. Your readers don’t have that luxury. In fact, more email opens happen on mobile than on desktop computers, according to Adestra's March 2015 report on the Top 10 Email Clients. 45% of email opens occurred on mobile, 36% on desktop and 19% in a webmail client. This means that the format of your emails needs to be responsive - it should look great on desktop and mobile, horizontal and vertical.
You assume that you've got it down. You should test everything.
If you’re like me, you’ve written articles, emails, newsletters, and more, and at some point have thought “This is the perfect title” or “This is the perfect subject line.” Also, if you’re like me, you’ve been disappointed in the actual numbers of that title. While it’s easy to assume that your titles and subject lines are home runs, testing out the same body text with different headers can make a world of difference, and statistically prove what’s really the best line you can write.
