Small chunks of content are great but omitting an unsubscribe option in your emails is a major flaw, says Matt Huntly, sales manager at Sign-Up
Good points
The introduction at the very top of the email includes personalisation and introduces the subject of the email well. People will know what it’s about if viewing in the preview pane even without images being loaded, encouraging them to proceed and open the email.
The use of a bullet point summary of articles near the top of the email catches the attention of people who are just quickly skimming their emails and will help boost interaction.
There’s lots of good structured content, condensed into quickly readable summaries with click-through links to the full articles. The insight provided by measuring click-throughs will help improve the relevance of future email campaigns, so not giving everything away in the email is good practice.
The email includes a clear link to a web version of the email near the top, contact details are prominent and there are plenty of calls to action throughout.
The use of alt-text, background colours, uncomplicated design and a good balance of images and text means the email displays well in different email clients and is readable with or without images.
Bad points
The layout is a little uneven and inconsistent: some of the boxes are padded but the box containing the bullet point summary isn’t. Including padding here would improve the look of the campaign.
While the use of introduction text is good, the box is arguably a little overwhelming and reduces the quality over the overall design. Such a sizable box means the main logo is shifted down the page, when it should be much more prominent.
The use of anchor links on the article summary would be helpful in directing recipients to quickly find the articles that interest them without having to scan through the email.
There are no white-list instructions to encourage people to add the sender’s address to their address books to ensure future inbox delivery and subscriber interaction.
The lack of an opt-out link is a big negative on this campaign. It’s essential to include this in every marketing email and make it easy for those subscribers that want to unsubscribe to do so.
All the click-throughs from the sub-articles use the same link text ‘read more’ – it would be better to use specific link text for each article to encourage more click-throughs.
Social sharing links and forward to a friend are powerful ways to spread your message further and reach people with similar interests to your existing subscribers. Subscribers are not encouraged to share the message.
Summary
The email contains a good balance of images and text, has a good layout, excellent content and a few nice features. Some minor design tweaks would perfect the look and improve readability.
The lack of unsubscription information is a major issue which could irritate people and have serious consequences if a recipient complained. Similarly, omitting any social sharing brings the overall rating of this email down.
Rating
Overall: 3/5 – With unsubscription information, consistent use of padding and redesigning the introduction text area to reduce the size and increase the prominence of the main logo would bring this up to 4/5.
