By Mark Brodsky
When it comes to content for your newsletter, how much is too much?
“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful,” said Mae West. But would your subscribers say the same thing?
Just as you may struggle on occasion to come up with content for your newsletter, sometimes you may find you have the opposite problem: there are too many interesting articles, new listings or other news you want to share.
People have short attention spans. Your subscribers, even the most loyal, are only going to spend a few moments looking at your email. The last thing you want to do is put together an email that’s so long, people get overwhelmed and just delete it.
How do you figure out how much is too much?
First, send yourself a test of your email.
How far down do you have to scroll before you get to the bottom of the email? If it’s more than two pages, it’s likely too long.
Determine where you can cut content, and link to it somewhere else. If it’s original content, point them to your blog or website. If it’s an article you’re sharing, link to the original source.
Another way to see if you’re including too much: take a look at your reports (your email service should be generating these) and compare the number of people who are clicking to the links higher up to the ones that are clicking below. It’ll just take a minute and it will be valuable information.
Here are some basic tips to grab your clients’ attention:
* Lead with the articles and listings you would most like people to pay attention to. Chances are, the higher up on the page it is, the more likely it is to be read. Not many people are fascinated by the monthly market news prepared by your local real estate board, but if you refer to it in your introduction and include a link there, you’ll find people will click through.
* Keep your copy to a minimum and link to the full piece. People will know if they’re interested in an article by the headline, photo and opening paragraph. When you publish an article in its entirety, you can’t track what people are interested in.
* If there are additional articles you want to share, you may want to link to them in your introduction or even have a separate item that might list other articles of interest, with a heading or a link.
Remember, when you’re choosing content, it’s more about what your readers want to read than what you want to tell them.
Mark Brodsky runs Mark Brodsky Digital Communications, a company that specializes in email marketing and social media. In addition to email newsletters and targeted campaigns, MBDC co-ordinates the setup for major social networking sites and ensures that they’re co-ordinated, so one piece of content gets shared many ways. www.mbdigitalcommunications.com; Email [email protected]
