Email Marketing: Turn Scanning Into Reading

Believe it or not, people still read marketing emails these days – they-just-read'em-a-lot-faster. More like ‘scanning’ than reading. They look for the highlights, the TEXT that stands out (even by putting text in parenthesis). There you go – three examples for you just in the previous sentence. 

Okay, enough with the gimmicks. The point is that if you’re writing an email message to your customers or prospects, always consider that the reader is scanning your message, not ‘reading it’ – at first. 

If you’re able to get your key points across to the scanner in a clean, crisp way, they’re more inclined to read the rest of what’s in your email. Which is exactly what you want them to do.

So, for your scanning pleasure, here’s a few gold doubloons pulled from our treasure chest of best practices in email marketing:

1. Put your offer or most important point in the email subject line. And again in the first paragraph.
2. Break up the copy for easy scanning. Keep paragraphs short – 2 or 3 sentences at most. 
3. Use bullet points, numbered lists, dashes to break up the text into easy scanning bits.
4. Go easy on making copy bold, in italic or use of exclamation points – less is more effective.
5. Spell-check-spell-check-psell-check. It matters! This is a reflection of your shop’s professionalism.  And I meant to do that.
6. Always have a ‘Call to Action’ somewhere in your email, even if it’s simply ‘Give us a call with any questions’. Make this stand out, so the scanner knows what you want them to do!

Here’s my Call to Action for you, dear scanner:  Step back and take a quick scan of this blog.  Pretty easy on the eyes, isn’t it?  There are a lot more tips in this white paper.