Is anyone reading your email marketing?

In fact, you've got so much to say the words just kept on coming out but it's ok because they are really important words and your customers will definitely want to read all of them. You've told them about an offer you've got running, what's happening at the weekend, the new team member you've hired, you've even gone so far as to tell them about Christmas because it's never too early, right?

You're 100% convinced this email is going to be the best one yet and generate a whole bunch of business. Your finger is itching to pull the trigger and send it.

Bang. Out it goes.

And then...nothing, just a sea of deaf ears and clicked trash icons. If this sounds familiar, don't worry, we've all been there. That's why we're going to let you in on a little secret...

No one wants to read your emails

At least not the multiple-message text-heavy emails that require more than minimum effort to be consumed. Take a second just to think about how much content we consume on a daily basis. From our Facebook news feeds to the emails hitting our inboxes, we're under a veritable bombardment and it's coming at us from all angles. For one of these 'content bombs' to stick, it has stand out from the crowd and inspire us to act.

That's why the days of the text-heavy email are numbered. With limited time available we're choosing video and image based content over text, and short-stories we can skim over rather than longer articles.

Applying this to your email marketing is easy

You have two options, both which will deliver better performance from your emails. First off, do one thing and do it really well. Choose your strongest offering and lead with that, whether it's a killer offer or a simple, clear message. This is a great example from Willow & Stone on how to do it well:

They use a strong image, include a good offer and have a great reason for clicking on it. This campaign saw a click-through rate more than double the average and lead to a boost in sales.

The second option, if you want to include multiple stories, is to keep them brief and easy to digest as seen in this email from Lucknam Park:

Each story offers something to the reader and teases them through to the website where they story is expanded upon. Again, this campaign saw a click-through rate significantly above the average.

Your customers would much rather receive an email like either of the two above than one that's too busy, full of too much information and lacks a clear identity in what it's trying to achieve. Of course, the very first thing you need to is make sure people open your email in order to read it. That all comes down to having a good subject line and is a blog for another day.

Set yourself the challenge with your next campaign to adopt the 'less is more' approach then see how your click-through rate compares to previous campaigns.

To make your email marketing even more successful, why not give it a turbo-charge by downloading our quick and easy guide to sending better emails?