AFFILIATE MARKETING
How to Determine The Ideal Length of Your Marketing Emails Your Customers Will Actually Read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Email marketing is booming: last year, 52% of marketers said their campaign’s return on investment (ROI) doubled, while 5.7% of marketers experienced an ROI four times larger compared to 2022, a Statista report shows.
How can you create similar results for your business this year?
The effectiveness of email marketing comes down to a few key factors:
- Knowing your audience and its pain points and desires.
- Creating emails that respond to those specific needs.
- Getting your emails in the inbox, where your subscribers can interact with them.
As the CEO of a B2B email marketing company, I often hear from customers about their top challenges. A big one? Creating emails that really engage and drive results. Getting the content, length and audience targeting just right is tough.
Related: How to Get People to Open – And Read – Your Emails
Most of your prospects prefer shorter emails
If you’re struggling to make your emails more engaging, here’s an aspect you may be overlooking: just make them shorter. Recent data from a ZeroBounce report shows that 66% of consumers prefer short emails, and only 6% favor longer ones.
But keep this caveat in mind: For 28% of people, email length becomes irrelevant if the content is well-tailored to their needs and interests.
It’s no surprise that people prefer shorter marketing emails. When inboxes are clogged with messages, why would you opt for a long message instead of a quick note? Concise and direct emails respect your prospects’ time and have a higher chance of getting their attention. But while most people prefer brevity, the quality and relevance of your emails are what truly capture and retain interest.
The message is clear for the 28% who don’t mind the length: When an email resonates well with their needs or interests, they’re willing to invest more time, regardless of word count. This segment of your audience is receptive to more in-depth content that speaks directly to their challenges.
How to determine the right email length
So, how do you strike the right balance between brevity and substance? The key is to start with understanding your audience. Segment your email list based on behaviors, preferences and past interactions. This segmentation allows you to tailor your messages more precisely. Also, you probably send different types of emails. That aspect alone should guide your approach:
- Newsletters can be longer and cover several pieces of information in more depth.
- Drip campaigns can consist of a series of emails that gently push your prospects closer to a purchase. Those emails can be short — sometimes, a few lines followed by a call-to-action (CTA) is enough.
- Targeted campaigns, such as a discount or free offer, can have an engaging image paired with a couple of sentences and a catchy CTA button.
If you’re still unsure whether your email is too long, here are a few tips to save you time and make things easier.
Start with a clear goal
Every email should have a clear purpose. Whether it’s to inform, increase engagement or drive sales, your goal will dictate the necessary length. Don’t add fluff just to extend an email; keep it as long as necessary to fulfill its purpose.
Choose simplicity and clarity
Use simple language and clear CTAs. Marketing emails rarely benefit from any metaphors. Your email should guide readers smoothly from the opening line to the desired action without unnecessary detours.
Personalize to the last detail
Use what you know about your customers to tailor your emails. When marketing emails feel personal, people care more about the message and less about the length.
Test and adjust to what your audience likes
Studies can point you in the right direction in terms of consumer preferences, but only you can determine what your audience responds to the most. Before sending your next email, consider A/B testing different lengths. Then, analyze your metrics to see what performed best.
Improve your layout
Sometimes, the way information is presented can affect how we perceive the length of an email. Breaking text with relevant images or using bullet points can make longer emails appear more digestible and engaging.
Related: 4 Things You Can Automate in Your Email Marketing That Will Save You Time and Drive Sales
Ask your subscribers
Asking for opinions shows you care about serving your audience better, so why not include a poll in your next newsletter? Allow your subscribers to tell you how long they’d like your emails to be. Nothing beats direct customer feedback in helping you create more effective campaigns.
Bonus tips to increase email engagement
Here are a few extra tips to help your next emails get more clicks:
- Try to keep your subject lines between 30 and 50 characters. Not only will your subscribers process them faster, but keeping your subject lines short ensures they display well on all devices.
- Check your email list health to avoid bounces and the likelihood of landing in the spam folder.
- Assess your spam complaint rate – it should be under 0.1% to comply with Yahoo and Google’s new email-sending rules.
Also, remember your goal is to connect with your audience genuinely, no matter how many words it takes to get there. If your email ends up longer than you’d planned but addresses a topic many of your subscribers care about, don’t worry. Engaging content can often justify a longer read.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
X Rival Bluesky Gains 1.2 Million New Users in 2 Days
X users may be migrating to bluer skies after a major change.
Bluesky is an open, ad-free social network that grew out of Twitter, now X, in 2019. The platform announced on Thursday that half a million new users signed up within a day of X announcing that it would be changing up its blocking feature “soon.” Blocked users on X will be able to see public posts but not like, reply or engage with them in any other way.
Although X said the change was to prevent people blocking others from sharing sensitive information about people they have blocked, X users stated that the move would support stalking, render the Block function useless and violate Google Play Store and Apple App Store requirements.
Related: Jack Dorsey Explains Bluesky Exit: ‘Literally Repeating All the Mistakes We Made’ at Twitter
Bluesky stated on Friday that more than 1.2 million people have signed up to use the platform since Wednesday.
congratulations everyone, we have now passed 12 million people total on bluesky!!! ?
over 1.2M new people have joined bluesky in the last two days — welcome!! ???
— Bluesky (@bsky.app) October 18, 2024 at 1:42 PM
Soon we’ll be launching a change to how the block function works.
If your posts are set to public, accounts you have blocked will be able to view them, but they will not be able to engage (like, reply, repost, etc.).
— Engineering (@XEng) October 16, 2024
Bluesky also experienced a surge in users last month after X shut down operations in Brazil on August 30. Within a week of the ban, Bluesky added 3 million new users, 85% of whom were from Brazil. X resumed operations on October 9, but not before Bluesky surged to 10 million users in September.
The platform now has 12 million users total, per a Friday announcement.
Meta’s Threads also appears to be experiencing a surge in users; it is currently first under the top free apps for iPhone list, with Bluesky coming in fifth. Threads surpassed 175 million users in July.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
Netflix Adds 5 Million Users, Analysts Predict Price Hike
Netflix posted its third-quarter earnings on Thursday and beat Wall Street predictions for both subscribers added and overall revenue. Meanwhile, analysts forecast that the streaming giant will soon raise its prices.
Netflix’s revenue for the third quarter was $9.825 billion, slightly more than the $9.769 billion analysts had predicted. The company also added 5.1 million subscribers, well over the 4 million additional users investors expected.
“Engagement, our best proxy for member happiness, remains healthy,” the report noted. “Through the first three quarters of 2024, view hours per member amongst owner households (the clearest view of engagement trends post the introduction of paid sharing) increased year over year.”
Related: Netflix Updated Its Famous Employee ‘Keeper Test’ in a New Culture Memo — Here’s What’s Changed
Netflix currently has over 600 million users with each one spending about two hours per day on the platform, per the report.
Will Netflix Raise Prices in the U.S.?
Thursday’s earnings report may not mean subscribers will avoid a price hike. The streaming company is increasing prices in Spain and Italy on Friday, and analysts from investment firms including Oppenheimer & Co. stated before the earnings release that a price hike may be on the way for U.S. users, too.
Netflix currently costs $6.99 per month for a standard plan with ads, $15.49 per month for a standard plan with up to two devices watching at the same time, and $22.99 per month for a premium plan with up to four devices supported.
Related: How to Hire Like Netflix — ‘This Is a Completely Different Way of Thinking About Human Capital’
AFFILIATE MARKETING
Nvidia’s ‘Insane’ AI Chip Demand Leads to Record Share Price
Nvidia is the second most valuable company in the world, with a market cap of over $3 trillion. At market close on Monday, shares of the AI chipmaker hit an unprecedented high of $138.07 before falling to $131.32 at the time of writing.
Nvidia’s performance is tied to strong demand for its AI chips. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated recently that demand for Nvidia’s Blackwell AI chip is “insane” and “everybody wants to have the most.” Nvidia expects to ship enough of the new chip to make several billion dollars.
Nvidia was briefly on the edge of unseating Apple as the most valuable company in the world on Monday. Last week, Nvidia shares grew by $400 billion in five days, more than the entire market cap of Costco.
Huang also said last month that demand was his biggest worry, or what kept him up at night.
“We have a lot of people on our shoulders, and everybody is counting on us,” he said, adding that having access to Nvidia’s technology was a “really emotional” point for the company’s clients.
Nvidia counts the biggest tech players among its clients: Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google contribute to more than 40% of its revenue. Nvidia’s earnings beat analyst expectations last quarter, with revenue growing 122% year-over-year, the fourth quarter in a row of growth over 100%.
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