Email Marketing Basics

Greetings to the habrasoobschestvo!

In the depths of Habrakhabr, articles about the layout of mailing lists were mentioned more than once (for which a special thank you to the authors), but not so much was said about email marketing, and therefore I would like to talk about some aspects of the user's psychology and that ) worth doing and why it is.

Show respect to the user

A very important detail is to take care of the nerves of such users. After all, these are also potential customers, so why not give them a choice? I lead to the fact that when you receive permission from the user for a regular mailing to him, in addition to his consent, ask him about the preferred format of the letter - html or plain / text. Someone might think that by default it is better to install the html option, in the hope that the person will skip this item and get a more efficient distribution option, but this is a fallacy. The thing is that an annoyed user is unpredictable and instead of unsubscribing from unwanted correspondence, it will simply send your letters to spam, which is not good for you.
')

Thick

No, this is not about trolling, but about inaccuracies in this article, specifically in this statement:

This is by no means a rule, but rather a recommendation, which I would rank as an unspoken standard: for the main table, which is the main construct of the letter, set the widths to 600 and 750 pixels. A smaller value is provided for small cards to subscribers, but the larger one has a lot of text in it (well, or whatever you are sending to your client).

You need to know your audience. Unexpectedly, but this is exactly what can tell you about how large the layout of the letter should be. The most popular email client for corporate parties is MS Outlook, which means that if your target audience is these same white-collar workers, you need to set the width of the layout to no more than 600px. The answer to the question "Why?" Will serve the image below.
The program interface is so “practical” that it does not allow you to conveniently scan through the “thick” letters. Otherwise, the author of the above article is right.

site menu

I will not point the finger, but some senders sin by duplicating the site menu in their mailings. This is bad because, most likely, the user is psychologically feeling on the site, observing the menu in the letter, which causes some confusion. A person does not need sections of the site, he needs information in a letter that should bring him to the site. Numerous tests have shown that letters that contain the site menu have a much lower percentage of clicking on links. Draw your own conclusions.

Your logo

It's simple. No logo, no confidence. No matter how trite it is, the logo should be placed in the upper left corner and be clickable. BUT! in no case should it be huge. With a font size of 12px, the logo should not exceed 70-90px in height. Large logo is too intrusive, which is associated with spam. In our case, the purpose of the logo is quick access to the site, trust in the company, and the most important thing is quick identification of the sender.

Content

A very common mistake is a large amount of information in the text. First of all, you should understand the functions of the distribution, there are only two of them:

• Reporting important but short information
• Make the user go to the site

In the first case, this may be a notification of any interaction. These can be alerts about comments, completed orders and various confirmations of user actions.
In the second case, you can report new products, special promotions, or just news coverage. The main thing to intrigue the recipient is three or four paragraphs of the text. Otherwise, a person can only run through the text, or not read the letter at all.

Unsubscribe

Much has been said about this, but it will never be superfluous to recall it again. I just quote a fragment from this topic:

As statistics show, the unsubscribe link cannot be hidden. Although probably at first it should be said that it should be! After all, even its presence sometimes fails many services in its mailing list. Why you should not mask? It will also be sideways. If a person has received a letter, and does not want to repeat further, he should be able to unsubscribe, and quickly. If he does not see the link to the unsubscribe, then he simply charges the letter in spam, which is not the best way for you. As for the speed of unsubscribe: the procedure should not require additional authorizations from the user. Unsubscribe should be done by direct link directly from the letter.

and complement the quote with the fact that in addition to the link to the unsubscribe, you need to tell the user why he received this letter. For example - "You received this email because you are a registered buyer of the shop% shopname%". Further the link to the formal reply, as well as the link to the window of changing the preference of the format of distribution

Written under inspiration:

• Email usability. Sweet and sweet
• Mailing Usability
• Mailing Lists - a bit of stupid
• As well as own work

PS Theme is not disclosed. To be continued.