MG3
Longer or Shorter Emails - What's best?
I've been charged with educating my team on "longer or shorter" email campaigns. What is best? Does it matter? Does either help click through and conversion rates?
My research is coming up with there is no right or wrong answer. In either case, it depends on what the goal of the email is, what one is trying to convey, whether or not the email is clean, concise, interesting and of course... the information is valuable and drives a call to action.
So, I'm wondering what the Litmus community thinks. Please let me know your thoughts.
MAG
I think that emails must be as short as possible. The details and any other info or fancy graphics may be on the landing page.
The best way to find out is, how many people clicking the links near the bottom?
Most of our emails are pretty short but our newsletter is quite long, the structure of it is;
Header,
3 x blogs,
Special offers,
3/4 x jobs,
Footer,
The offers section is always the most clicked, and that starts about 800px down the page. The blogs get good clicks too and then the jobs come pretty close behind considering they are at the end of the email.
Scrolling is second nature, especially on mobile. Just keep it nicely spaced, if people start scrolling into a cluttered space they are likely to assume the rest of the email is cluttered too.
Having said that, short, to the point emails, with one clear message tend to perform better for us for marketing stuff.
I continue to research and it is really a mixed bag of thoughts on the subject. Even some of the tests on longer vs. shorter emails have been surprising. I've always thought short is best, but there appears to be no clear cut answer. Which way is best really depends on multiple variables, such as strategy, audience, product, overall message, etc.
If it were up to me, short is a must. I check 90% of my email on my phone, so those emails that are long or require scroll of any sort get the axe.
I actually die a little inside everytime I'm asked to work on an email with what feels like eons of content that reminds me of the letters my great grandma Agnes would send.
I try to help clients, in higher education especially, get to the point fast... that way we can get to the action quicker and be happy. Cuz who doesn't like to be happy? :) :D =) :P
I’ve designed two types of templates, long and short.
I believe as long as you don’t have too much white space and don’t have to scroll too much, either one works.
Just keep in mind the text length.
My experience is short emails with a single, strong call to action perform best.