Email: update and split test your templates
Why?
I still see a lot of charities sending their newsletters and mailshots using very formal, over designed templates. There’s a few issues with this:
- Email is a personal medium – the more your emails look like an email from a real person as opposed to an organisation, the more likely people are to engage with them
- Emails that use heavily branded templates, lots of images and the ‘view this email in your browser’ link at the top, are more likely to end up in a subscriber’s Spam folder or the Promotions tab
Try a stripped-back email template and see what kind of results it gets. By stripped-back, I mean:
- Minimal branding – just put your logo in the footer or the top right of the email
- No header image. If you need to include images, put them below the opening salutation and first paragraph.
- Remove the ‘view this email in your browser’ link
- No headlines – the email should open with the salutation. Always personalise with the first name field
- Plain white background, no coloured layout blocks
- One single column of text
- Sender name and signature should be a real person in your organisation, not just the organisation name
If you’re not sold on this approach, it’s really easy to set up an A/B split test. Send your usual template to half your list, and a stripped-back version to the other half. See which gets the better result.
How?
- Start by reading about digital consultant Glyn Thomas’ excellent experiment on email lists – there’s loads of great insights there about what works
- Look for the simple 1 column default template in your email marketing service, and customise your own version
- Use Digital Charity Lab’s free mailshot guide
- Guide to setting up an email split test from Neil Patel