Finding or Creating Relevant Content

By John WallProducer, M Show ProductionsBlog: http://www.themshow.com

Anyone doing an email campaign struggles to find relevant content. With so much emphasis on technology, subject lines, click-through rates and landing pages, it sometimes feels like the content is an afterthought.

I’ve found that my email campaigns tend to fall into two major categories: simple notices (“Here is the link for the webinar you signed up for that is running tomorrow”) or more elaborate messages that compel someone to take action.

For “notice” email, I’ve found that they can never be too short or too simple. A Jakob Nielson study that has stuck with me proved that bulleted lists of plain facts with hyperlinks are your ultimate goal, because readers want only the meat and links (read this legendary article by typing this into a web browser: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html). Full paragraphs, blustering marketing copy, and elaborate descriptions do nothing but cause more people to jump off before getting to the moment of truth (conversion). The only way to screw up here is to drone on for too long or make the links difficult to find. My tests have proved that large fonts are a good thing and links should always be blue and underlined—no need to get crazy and try and set new standards.

For messages that are meant to inform or entice, you must choose between finding relevant content or creating your own. In my experience, the choice has always been simple: ...

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