Get Your Point Across!
Understanding how your recipients view your emails to effectively organize your content:
Let’s say you have a phone message to relay to your roommate. You decide to leave a note for them- and you’re hoping they’ll get this note before they leave for work the next morning. Where do you leave it? It seems a simple answer: on the bathroom mirror; the refrigerator door; atop the coffee pot… etc. If you know your roommate’s morning routine, you can leave the note anywhere their eyes will be during that routine.
If you’re especially clever, you may consider not leaving the note in the first place your roommate visits in the morning – as they may be too groggy to pay any attention. You also might consider not leaving it in the last place, as they will be in a hurry to get out the door. Either way, you’re not going to leave the note someplace you know your roommate will not be visiting, say, under the bed. Why? Because you want them to see it, of course!
This all seems common sense, right? Well what may not be so “common sense” is applying this same concept to your email newsletters that go out to your client. If you knew your client’s email reading routine, wouldn’t you use that knowledge to organize the information you wish them to receive?
There are countless elements that play into how your contacts receive your messages. The time of day it is sent off or received, the day of the week, the time of month, attention span of the reader, how busy their business is at the time, whether or not they had a bad day… etc. But let’s talk about one of the most basic – the layout of the content itself.
So your contact OPENS the email – success! But are they getting all the information they want and you want them to have? They may not receive the message as you intended it to be received because you are making crucial placement mistakes.
Many studies cite an “F-Shaped” reading pattern of web content when studying eye tracking in those who read their language from left to right, top to bottom. This shape suggests that readers usually begin at the top left corner of the page and move across the top to the right. They then go back to the left side and read across again, but before long their movement across from left to right gets shorter, like the second limb of a capital F. Once they lose interest in the main body of the article, they’ll move on to content placed in sidebars.
Of course there are variations on this F shape, sometimes users will read across the entire article creating more of an E shape. I also found studies that show more of a U shape (down the left and up the right side). However, the F-shape is by far the most popular when studying web content eye-tracking and some things are pretty much agreed upon:
Headlines get read. Make sure you’re putting the most important information, in the simplest way possible in your headlines. Though it doesn’t need to be as short and sweet as your subject line, you should continue to think about creating interest.
Keep it fairly short – remember, this is an email, not a novel. Your contacts have other emails to read and business to do. In most situations, your contact does not have the attention span for your email that they do for other reading material – say, the Sunday paper.
Not everything will be read. What is it they say, on average a person only retains 25% of what they are told? So think along those lines when creating your newsletter. Put the most important info at the top, at least in the first part of your article, and think of the rest as “extra”.
Define paragraphs or sections with “mini-headlines”. Make the first sentence in a paragraph an introduction to the following information – engage readers and create interest.
Smaller type encourages focus. The same way that speaking softly will cause listeners to lean in and tune up their ears, smaller type forces readers to pay more attention. Just make sure you keep it legible! (Note that some studies found that smaller text will sometimes be ignored when it is placed alongside larger text, as with sub-headlines)
Remember, just like your roommate receiving their phone message from you, your readers want the information you have for them, otherwise they wouldn’t have opted-in to your correspondence. You just have to give it to them in a place they can easily find it.
Conduct your own research and let us know your findings! Did you get better click-through rates when links were on the left or the right side of your newsletter? Are your articles getting more attention that the advertisements on your site? Are you noticing a difference when you send out more text-heavy newsletter versus the short and sweet?
Articles I used to write this entry:
“The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes” http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/main.htm
“F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content” http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html
“11 Striking Findings From an Eye Tracking Study” http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/05/20/11-striking-findings-from-an-eye-tracking-study/
“3 Hot Marketing Tips from Heat Map Analysis” http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/1499/3-Hot-Marketing-Tips-from-Heat-Map-Analysis-images.aspx
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Understanding how your recipients view your emails to effectively organize your content:
Let’s say you have a phone message to relay to your roommate. You decide to leave a note for them- and you’re hoping they’ll get this note before they leave for work the next morning. Where do you leave it? It seems a simple answer: on the bathroom mirror; the refrigerator door; atop the coffee pot… etc. If you know your roommate’s morning routine, you can leave the note anywhere their eyes will be during that routine.
If you’re especially clever, you may consider not leaving the note in the first place your roommate visits in the morning – as they may be too groggy to pay any attention. You also might consider not leaving it in the last place, as they will be in a hurry to get out the door. Either way, you’re not going to leave the note someplace you know your roommate will not be visiting, say, under the bed. Why? Because you want them to see it, of course!
This all seems common sense, right? Well what may not be so “common sense” is applying this same concept to your email newsletters that go out to your client. If you knew your client’s email reading routine, wouldn’t you use that knowledge to organize the information you wish them to receive?
There are countless elements that play into how your contacts receive your messages. The time of day it is sent off or received, the day of the week, the time of month, attention span of the reader, how busy their business is at the time, whether or not they had a bad day… etc. But let’s talk about one of the most basic – the layout of the content itself.
So your contact OPENS the email – success! But are they getting all the information they want and you want them to have? They may not receive the message as you intended it to be received because you are making crucial placement mistakes.
Many studies cite an “F-Shaped” reading pattern of web content when studying eye tracking in those who read their language from left to right, top to bottom. This shape suggests that readers usually begin at the top left corner of the page and move across the top to the right. They then go back to the left side and read across again, but before long their movement across from left to right gets shorter, like the second limb of a capital F. Once they lose interest in the main body of the article, they’ll move on to content placed in sidebars.
Of course there are variations on this F shape, sometimes users will read across the entire article creating more of an E shape. I also found studies that show more of a U shape (down the left and up the right side). However, the F-shape is by far the most popular when studying web content eye-tracking and some things are pretty much agreed upon:
Headlines get read. Make sure you’re putting the most important information, in the simplest way possible in your headlines. Though it doesn’t need to be as short and sweet as your subject line, you should continue to think about creating interest.
Keep it fairly short – remember, this is an email, not a novel. Your contacts have other emails to read and business to do. In most situations, your contact does not have the attention span for your email that they do for other reading material – say, the Sunday paper.
Not everything will be read. What is it they say, on average a person only retains 25% of what they are told? So think along those lines when creating your newsletter. Put the most important info at the top, at least in the first part of your article, and think of the rest as “extra”.
Define paragraphs or sections with “mini-headlines”. Make the first sentence in a paragraph an introduction to the following information – engage readers and create interest.
Smaller type encourages focus. The same way that speaking softly will cause listeners to lean in and tune up their ears, smaller type forces readers to pay more attention. Just make sure you keep it legible! (Note that some studies found that smaller text will sometimes be ignored when it is placed alongside larger text, as with sub-headlines)
Remember, just like your roommate receiving their phone message from you, your readers want the information you have for them, otherwise they wouldn’t have opted-in to your correspondence. You just have to give it to them in a place they can easily find it.
Conduct your own research and let us know your findings! Did you get better click-through rates when links were on the left or the right side of your newsletter? Are your articles getting more attention that the advertisements on your site? Are you noticing a difference when you send out more text-heavy newsletter versus the short and sweet?
Articles I used to write this entry:
“The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes” http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/main.htm
“F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content” http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html
“11 Striking Findings From an Eye Tracking Study” http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/05/20/11-striking-findings-from-an-eye-tracking-study/
“3 Hot Marketing Tips from Heat Map Analysis” http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/1499/3-Hot-Marketing-Tips-from-Heat-Map-Analysis-images.aspx
