As email marketers, we have a lot of goals to achieve. There’s putting together the ideal list of recipients to send emails to, and then convincing them to open the email once it arrives in their inbox.

However, there is another critical factor to consider. Are your email recipients truly reading them? Consider the traditional newsletter. Sure, it may be intended to appeal to your target market and include the ethos of your brand. However, you may want more.

You must design your emails for optimal readability in order to enhance the effect of your email marketing and get the most out of each newsletter. Even if you are a seasoned email marketer with years of experience, you may seek design advice to assist boost the likelihood that your readers will digest every word.

We’ll go over some design guidelines in this piece to assist you not just enhance readability in your email newsletters, but also raise the possibility that your reader will be engaged enough to read all the way through.

Use these suggestions to build designs that will keep your readers’ attention riveted to the screen.

Change up the look of your newsletter design

You’ve definitely done a lot of study on the visual appeal of design as an email marketer. One of the wonderful things about newsletters as a marketing tool is the freedom to be creative.

Colors, layout, and other design elements all add to its overall appearance. You’ve undoubtedly heard that the appearance of an email may improve the probability that the recipient will read it all the way through.

What you may not have realized is how critical it is to diversity your designs. If your viewers repeatedly seeing the same item, with tiny variations, they’ll catch on quickly. This may cause them to get uninterested and skim.

Consider how the New York Times benefited from variety in design. They didn’t get a 70% open rate by delivering the same basic kind of email over and again. To attain this statistic, they employed 30 distinct designs. While we’re not discussing open rates here, you can guarantee those emails were opened to be read, mostly because the readers were curious about what was next.

Takeaway: Everyone appreciates diversity. Changing things up keeps your readers interested and engaged. However, it is not just the design and aesthetics that are important to your reader. The email’s content is its main attraction. More precisely, the copy is the most important factor to examine.

The way you write your content may have a big influence on how your readers feel about spending time listening to what you have to offer.

Learn copywriting best practices, with a focus on email etiquette

The tone of your company’s voice is influenced by how you compose your emails. Obviously, a more engaging voice will keep readers interested.
The challenge is to realize that when it comes to best practices, it doesn’t matter what your industry is.

The brand voice is. You may be working for an administrative firm that talks in a professorial tone, or a fashionable corporation that employs a wide range of slang. There are still certain best practices you can adopt to improve the readability of your emails. They are as follows:

Use short, snappy phrases

In general, shorter phrases are preferable. Copywriters understand that readers prefer concise phrases that are easy to understand. It keeps the statement’s purpose clear and prevents the reader from being overwhelmed. Fortunately, this method works wonderfully in email. Because you have limited room and most of what you say is expressed in images, shorter is better.

Concentrate on the advantage to your readers

If you want people to stay reading, you must provide them with a compelling reason. Even if your product or service has a slew of fantastic features, your reader may not be as enthused as you would want. Instead, concentrate on how your product or service will help the reader. If readers sense that they have something to gain, they are more inclined to continue reading.

Use actionable, pertinent specifics

Another rule of thumb in copywriting is that fluff is negative. Each word should have an effect, and each section of your content should provide useful information to the reader. If you want to boost readability even further, start with pertinent information that tell your reader why they should keep reading. Consider this Warby Parker example.

As we can see, readers like it when you go right to the point. Begin by reintroducing yourself, how you are related to the reader, and how your newsletter will benefit them. Are you giving a discount, useful information, or both?

Takeaway: Copy is everything. Yes, visual design has a significant impact on how your email seems at a glance. However, if you want to persuade readers to read all the way through, make sure you have email copywriting best practices down pat.

Write for the screen rather than the paper

We’re all aware that skimming isn’t the same as properly reading. However, some of your readers will undoubtedly be tempted to do the former. We live in a time where loads of information is released every minute, therefore readers must be able to process it rapidly.

If your readers do feel the need to scan the newsletter, make sure everything is in the appropriate location so they don’t miss anything vital. The advantage of this is that they are more likely to notice those delicious bits of information that cause people to pause and take a deeper look. That’s what you desire, and there’s an easy way to do it.

Emails should be written for a screen rather than a page.

The graph above depicts how our eyes are pulled to a page in a book (rendered in online form) vs a normal page we’d read on our computers or phones. When you arrange your content in the correct locations, you increase your chances of capturing your readers’ attention.

Takeaway: Even though you know some readers may be inclined to skim, you can persuade them to go back and read every word again by placing the greatest sections where they’re most likely to discover them.

Wrap up

It is critical to understand how to develop email newsletters that your target audience will desire to read. It’s critical not just for getting the most out of your email marketing, but also for maintaining your sender reputation.

If you’re the sort of creator who creates material that people like, the popularity of your email list will expand by word of mouth. It makes it easy to generate subscribers, engage readers, and achieve organizational goals using your email platform.

Readability may have an influence on the other metrics we mentioned before. Your ability to persuade consumers to open emails and click through is heavily influenced by their prior interactions with you. If you provide them actionable emails with useful information, they’ll look forward to hearing from you again.

You may do the following to make your emails more appealing to your target audience:

• Change up the look of your email design.
• Master copywriting best practices such as producing concise, actionable phrases.
• Make emails easy to scan on reader displays.

Write content that your readers will like, vary your layout, and keep your platform in mind—with these suggestions, it’s simple to send emails that your audience will read from beginning to end.