E-mail Newsletter Best Practices
E-mail Newsletters
Best Practices 
(6.4 MB)
Howard Dean Revolution: How
the Dean Campaign Used the Website and E-mail Newsletters to Energize Supporters
and Raise Money 
(657 KB)
Other resources
- Best Practices in Marketing with Email Newsletters from MarketingSherpa
- Email Marketing Metrics Guide: 2006 edition from MarketingSherpa (See also the Executive Summary)
- Email Newsletter Usability from the Nielsen Norman Group
More from Jakob Nielsen
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Newsletter Usability: Can a Professional Publisher Do Better?: The Washington Post's email newsletter earns a high usability score. It's particularly good at setting users' expectations before they subscribe, though the unsubscribe interface has some problems.
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Bush vs. Kerry: Email Newsletters Rated: Both candidates for president of the United States offer email newsletters with much good content to excite supporters, but miserable subscription interfaces and several other usability problems.
- Biggest factor in determining whether someone will open your message is the subject line and "from" address.
- Use alt-tags
- Open rates are highest on Monday
- Get your list professionally cleaned on a regular basis.
#1: Keep it short and focused
- Size, frequency, and best delivery time varies for each newsletter.
- Users' most frequent complaint was about newsletters that arrived too often. And, when we let them vent, the most frequent advice our study participants had for newsletter editors was to "keep it brief." -- Jakob Nielsen
- Best industry practice is to have 95% of the pertinent information on one screen.
- Give the reader links to landing pages for articles or text longer than 75 words.
#2: Make it scannable
- Recipients make a 2 second decision about what to look at and what to ignore, based on viewing no more than 20 words of content.
- Even if they read, they skim. According to Jakob Nielsen, only 11% of newsletters are read thoroughly.
- Table of contents
- Headlines
- Headlines and links are naturally scannable
- Crisp, clean layout
- Clear section headings
- Table of contents
- Narrative format
- Clearly marked sections
- Different sections can have different designs
- Crisp, clean layout
- White space
- Two columns
- logo
- contact information
- list of events
- additional resources or related links
- subscribe link
- forward-to-a-friend link
- pledge or donate link
#3: Personalize
- Simple name-slug personalization can lift click-through rates by up to 30 percent. We've seen true content personalization lift response rates by 300 percent. -- Rachael Heapps, Executive Creative Director, RappDigital New York
#4: Segment
- Send customized newsletter based on demographics, interests, giving history, etc.
#5: Use images wisely
- Images can enhance an e-mail and make it more engaging and professional.
- But Outlook Express SP2, Outlook 2003, Hotmail, and AOL 9.0 block images by default.
- Images also increase download time for users and production time for staff.
- Copyright / permission issues
#6: Provide plain text version
- HTML is important … Anecdotal evidence suggests that HTML e-mail campaigns get two to three times higher response rate than plain text. Direct research indicates that the average click-through rate for text is 15.4 percent while the rate for HTML is 18.4 percent. -- eMarketer, e-mail Marketing Report
- … but plain text is important, too. AOL usually accounts ~25% addresses in nonprofit e-mail lists.
- Before version 6.0, AOL users could receive only or rich text or plain text.
- No way to tell which version AOL users have, or how many other users cannot receive HTML.
- Some users prefer plain text
- Work-arounds for plain text: ;ink to web version, either at the top of the message or as a comment in the HTML code.
#7: Include clear call to action
#8: Include donate link
#9: Pay attention to the From address and Subject line
- For the From address, some e-mail clients display the name and some display the e-mail address. [http://www.emaillabs.com/article_optimizeforclients.html]
- From Address should be readable and consistent
- Subject lines. In a study, zero-to-49 character subject lines had an
open-rate 12.5% higher than the 50 or more character subject lines. Click-through
rates for the zero-to-49 character group were 75% higher than the 50 or
more group. [http://www.emarketer.com/article.aspx?1003077]
- For example,
- Today's Headlines: Thursday, July 1, 2004
- [ContentBiz] Edmunds.com Tests Paid Search: Results... Pls Forward
- Be concise -- 40-60 characters
- Include some actual content
- Always begin subject lines the same way
- Avoid sensationalized headlines or overuse of capitalization and punctuation
- Avoid current spam themes, e.g. free, mortgages, Viagra, etc.
- For example,
#10: Include instructions for spam filters
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According to Time Magazine, between 40-70% of all email is getting killed (sp@m filtered) before anyone has a chance to read it. 27% of all permission-based email never makes it to the recipient's inbox.
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Many spam filters work by blocking anything not in the user's address book, e.g. Outlook, AOL, Hotmail, and many 3rd party products. So remind users to add the newsletter's send address to their address book. Also remind users in the opt-in and welcome messages.
- Include "Did your email system mangle this newsletter? See it online" at the top.
#11: Include "forward to friend"
#12: Include e-mail address in footer
- E-mail address the message was sent to
- Instructions for unsubscribing
- Link to privacy policy
- Your physical address
#13: Don't ask for too much info on the sign-up form
- Collect as much useful information as possible without driving away too many users from the sign-up process
- Minimize number of required fields
- Feature a sign-up form on every page of the website
- Provide explicit information about: what type of information the newsletter will contain, how frequently it is published,how to see a sample newsletter before subscribing
- Obtaining and confirming permissions
- Double opt-in: after signing up for newsletter, user must respond to confirmation e-mail
- Confirmed opt-in: after signing up for newsletter, user receives confirmation e-mail before first newsletter but doesn't have to respond
- Opt-in: user enters his/her e-mail address and begins receiving newsletter
- Opt-out: user does not explicitly sign up for newsletter, but has opportunity to unsubscribe
- Pay attention to the order of the questions. Asking for a consumer's contact information at the start of the form is less successful than starting with questions to help the consumer. For example, eDiets, Match.com, and Classmates all start with questions like 1. Your Goal, 2. Your Body Type, 3. Your desired timeframe to reach goal, etc. ... and only at the tail end of the registration ask for actual contact data.
- Test your submit button. Almost all button tests show that "Get your free listing" or whatever is better than "Submit"
#14: Thank the user for subscribing, and provide information on what happens next
#15: Test
- Test design and deliverability for a variety of ISPs and e-mail clients
- For Internet browsers, Internet Explorer 5.x and 6.x account for 95% of total browsers used.
- But for e-mail clients, Outlook accounts for 42%, and Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, AOL, and Outlook Express account for more than 10% each.
- Split testing for layout, content, subject lines, etc.
Nielsen's general observations
There is pretty much a "what have you done for me lately?" phenomenon at play, where newsletters have to justify their space in the inbox on a daily basis.
When we asked users to describe the benefits of e-mail newsletters, three reasons stood out, each being highlighted by more than one-third of users:
- Informative: They keep users up to date (mentioned by two-thirds of the users).
- Convenient: They're delivered straight to the user's information central and require no further action beyond a simple click.
- Timely: They offer current information and real-time delivery.
Other notes
Position of sign-up box
| right-hand | 51% |
| bottom | 35% |
| top nav-bar | 14% |
Technical requirements
- Width: 600 px
- Use CSS 1.1, not 2.0. If you use Cascading Style Sheets 2.0, it may not make it past the email gateway, and certain email clients (Netscape Communicator and Lotus Notes) won't render the message properly. [http://www.marketingsherpa.com/print.cfm?contentid=2829. See also CSS and Email, Kissing in a Tree]
- Use table with absolute widths. [http://www.marketingsherpa.com/print.cfm?contentid=2829]
- Links. In a study, E-Mails with 25 or more links had an open rate 12% higher than those containing fewer than 25 links, and a click-through rate 29% higher than for e-mails with fewer than 25 links. [http://www.emarketer.com/article.aspx?1003077]
How to Avoid Being Labelled as Spam
- Don't use an exclamation point.
- The use of all caps, even if it's just one word, is a red flag.
- Don't deliberately misspell words (and don't do it accidentally either).
- Avoid non-standard characters.
- Only use necessary punctuation. In most cases, at most you might need a comma or dash.
- If you're using an apostrophe, make sure it's straight, not "smart."
- Avoid "spammy" words
Subject Lines
- Be brief.
- Should be under 50 characters, including spaces, as most email clients display 50 characters or less. A recent study done by email monitoring company Return Path showed that, "subject lines with 49 or fewer characters had open rates 12.5 percent higher than for those with 50 or more," and that, "click-through rates for subject lines with 49 or fewer characters were 75 percent higher than for those with 50 or more."
- Fewer than 35 characters is better.
- Be Specific. Use "The Green Thumb: 3 Tips for Summer Gardening." instead of "The Green Thumb Newsletter: June 2007."
- Write it Last.
- Take Some Time - Don't just dash off your subject lines. Considering how important they are, take some time to think about them and write several (3-4) before choosing which one to use.
- Avoid too much punctuation
- Don't repeat "from" label. The From and Subject line should work in tandem
- Avoid the words Help, Percent off, and Reminder. (MailChimp)
- If you send the same campaign over and over again (such as reminders for an event), your open rates will decline with each subsequent campaign. (MailChimp)
Examples from VerticleResponse:
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More examples from MailChimp
| Bad | Good |
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