Trying new things won’t always get you too far. Where food is concerned, a bad choice can lead to an empty belly. With sports, think injuries. And if something like karaoke’s at issue, lifelong nicknames are a possible result. Fortunately, the following newsletter tips have been well-tested.

Karen Gedney worked with Towers Perrin, which deals in professional services, to optimize a newsletter called Monitor. At the start of the process, Monitor suffered from open rates in the 16 percent range and a click-through rate of closer to four percent.

Gedney writes, “I suggested that a table of contents with links be added to the top of the e-mail and that a real masthead treatment be created. As you can see in the next sample, Towers Perrin graphic designer Shelomo Dobkin took this idea one brilliant step further. He put the table of contents in the banner itself, and in such a way that it isn’t blocked by Outlook’s annoying image-blocking feature. Then he created an eye-catching ‘magazine cover’ masthead with a photograph . . .”

She then continues, “Additionally, we saw results in eye-mapping studies indicating that people focus more attention on the left side of an e-mail. So Dobkin moved the less-important sidebar over to the right, allowing readers to pay more attention to the main articles. Another improvement made was to add a ‘Read more’ link under each article instead of the former ‘Click here to continue’ link, which wasn’t as directional.”

And sure enough, Monitor’s open rates are now almost double what they were, while click-through rates are exactly triple. It’s probably worth seeing if these same approaches can be applied to your newsletters.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Newsletters, Tips. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About the Author: Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.