Welcome to Vol.21 of Email Advice in Your Inbox!

Hello again, friend!

We're into the 5^th month of 2024 and this year is well on its way. We hope you're doing okay and feeling good about May so far.


Today's Volume contains some fun email learning, starting with crafting emails for short attention spans.

We all know that most folks skim emails, so designing and writing for this is critical. Read on to find out more and see what else today's email holds.


 

Here's what you'll learn this week
 

• Emails for short attention spans
   

• This week's top email resources
   

• Email expert practical tip of the week
   

• Smart email senders we're learning from
   

• The fun stuff: We hope this email finds you...
   

• Our latest feature amongst a list of successful landing pages
  
   

Let's begin this week's email learning 🚀

Our first-ever Volume of Email Advice in Your Inbox discussed creating emails for skim readers.
 

Today, we build on this to show you how to craft emails that cater to short attention spans.

The goal for any email remains:

Empart your message as quickly and valuably as possible.

To do this, you'll need to understand how people consume emails and what type of behaviour to cater for. We'll build on more practical tips to get this right too.

Did you know that, on average, only 37 - 200 words of your email campaigns are likely read by your email audience?

So how do you prevent your subscribers from skim-reading your emails?

You can't.
 

We're in a world of short attention spans and instant dopamine gratification. There's so much else vying for your audience's attention.

What is crucial is answering how you can get your message across as quickly as you can.

But how?
 

This question plagues many email senders because so much time is spent curating content, designing the perfect email, and monitoring email results.

We believe it begins by building skimmable emails.
 

According to a Nielsen Norman Group eye-tracking study, the email recipients they tested consume email as follows:
 

Skimmed - 69% of the readers

Thoroughly read - 19% of the readers

Read all content - 6% of the readers

Glanced but did not read at all - 6% of the readers
 

There's also research by Litmus that states that the average email attention span is around 13.4 seconds long and that the ideal email copy consumed is around 50 words in total.
 

These stats highlight what we already know. You have such a short time to capture a reader's interest before you've lost them.
 

Here are a few tips, that may seem obvious, but continue to help drive your message home quickly:
 

Left-align your email's copy

Reading relies on a multitude of visual cues to make sense of where you're situated on either a screen or a page.

We need an anchor for our eyes as we navigate through content, and a crucial visual cue in email readability is the beginning of a new line in a paragraph.

While the centred text may look good, it detracts from readability and concise comprehension of your content.

There's also a rule of thumb that any copy that is longer than two lines must be left-aligned.
 

Make it legible

With the majority of emails being opened on mobile devices, you're going to want your copy legible on a small screen.

A font size of 14px and bigger for mobile is non-negotiable. You'll also want to check that your line spacing and line height are appropriate for both desktop and mobile view email reading.
 

Make it easy to understand

The popular Flesch Reading Ease test analyses how easily someone can read your text, and bases this on your sentence structure and word length.

The score ranges from 0 to 100, the higher your score, the easier your readability.

Aim for a score of 60-70, considered plain English easily understood by 13- to 15-year-olds, especially for most marketing copy. For effective marketing copy, your aim is in the range of 60 to 70 to be considered English that's easy enough to be understood by 13 to 15-year-olds.

There are a few tools out there, but we use this one by GoodCalculators.

Interest in the content of an email diminishes as the email extends below the fold, so cut the copy and keep the most important points of the message near the top.

Visual hierarchy is your focus when it comes to design that needs to cater to quick consumption.

We've discussed this in a previous Volume, but this can't be overstated - The visual structure of your email needs to lead your readers' eyes well enough for them to take action (or, at least, take notice).

Use these tips to tweak your designs to cater for quick consumption:
 

Contrast colours and text

Contrast is essentially the distinction between your text colour and whatever is behind the text. If you can't see where the text ends and the image begins, then you're going to miss a chance to impart your message.

A good rule of thumb is to use a light text colour on a dark background, or vice versa.

There's the added benefit to your readers of enhanced accessibility. You can check your colour contrast using this tool by WebAIM.

Use white space

White space is your friend. Don't cram your email with text and images while not leaving any 'breathing room' between these elements.

This will make your email appear less cluttered and easier to digest quickly, which is precisely what you want when capturing attention quickly.

It also helps keep your reader focused and not paralysed by too many components jumping out from your email at once.

There are various aspects to tweak in your email designs such as your calls-to-action and email layout pattern, but begin with colour and white-space, and iterate as you go.
 

Email resources of the week

Some cool tools and tips to help you become a better email marketer

Email Expert Practical Tip of the Week

This week's insight is brought to you by marketing and behavioural science mastermind, Nancy Harhut.

It's fascinating to see how one tiny design change can impact the possibility of success in email


Use it. Don't use it 🤷

Smart email senders we're learning from

We believe that learning from some of the greatest in the industry is one of the best ways to improve.

Here are three emails we found that followed sound email principles or used innovative strategies to nail their email goals.

Take a look at this week's best 👌
 

Some more (email) fun to make your day better

I hope this email finds you...

How brilliant is this meme? (Thanks, Jen) We thought it was too good to keep to ourselves.

Relatable or just us?

(Courtesy of the creative Amii James.)

At least email cares, right? 

These emails are proudly made possible by

Africa's best email service agency and email marketing platform

Before you go - A brilliant source of inspo 👌

There are so many great resources we keep discovering.

We're even being featured in some of them, like today's find.
 

Louis Nicholls from Grow My Newsletter is an email expert responsible for the growth and monetisation of some of the best creators out there.

He and his team are also boffins when it comes to helpful tools, like this curated library of over 300 landing pages with their conversion rates listed too.


We're a little dubious about some of the conversion rates, but it's great to be featured, thanks to readers like you, friend 🙂
 

Head over to the library and check out our page, and so many more.
 

Before we go! Remember, we help businesses and content creators, just like you, win at email. How? Here are three ways we can help:

Get the guide! We've spent 200+ hours compiling over 250 pages covering everything you need to launch and win at email. Find out more here. 

Sponsor this newsletter! Keen to share your business in front of hundreds of email experts? Get in touch to discuss sponsorships here.

Contribute your knowledge! We're looking to feature experts in future Volumes. Have an idea to share? Let us know here.

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