Should your email template age with the relationship?

Templates cast their own spell over us. The name implies something fixed. Once defined and coded, they are largely forgotten.

The attention we give each new outgoing email focuses on the content and offer that changes.

The layout and static elements within the template — logos, administrative footers and links etc. — are all commonly ignored. Because they stay the same (duh!).

But should they stay the same?

Many email templates are essentially designed for strangers…for people new to the list.

This premise, plus the fear of being ignored, places design and copywriting emphasis on recognition elements: logos, branded subject lines, exhortations to view online if images don’t show up, etc.

It’s all designed to allow your (new) reader to pick out your message in a cluttered inbox. Definitely best practice.

Now consider this…

When we meet someone for the first time, we are at pains to introduce ourselves and ensure we are recognized. When you go for a beer together for the 50th time, recognition is not an issue (after the beer, perhaps, but not before).

The way we present ourselves changes to reflect the status of the relationship. Is there value in applying that concept to email?

This is a long-accepted practice in terms of the email elements that always vary: content and offers might be tailored to past click behavior or other actions/information recorded over the course of the relationship with the reader.

Might you apply the same principle to the static elements of the email?

First, we need to define when a subscriber becomes “long term”. At what point can we consider a recipient so accustomed to our email stream that we can move to a more mature template?

For example…”recipient has been on the list at least X months and interacts with an email at least once every Y weeks”.

If we accept the idea that long-term subscribers don’t need the same emphasis on recognition elements, what parts of the template might we change for this group?

Preview pane graphics

The top left of most commercial emails is reserved for a nice fat logo or other graphical cues that reinforce the sender’s identity, even if the email is only viewed in the preview pane.

A mature email template might shrink the size of these graphical cues, lifting content higher up the email and releasing space for more action-oriented text and images.

Subject line branding

It’s not unusual to find that including the sender’s name or brand in the subject line lifts open rates. It helps with recognition.

I do it with my newsletter:

Subject: (Email Marketing Reports) New list growth tips, trends to worry about, role of images,…

However, the branded / not branded comparison is made using emails sent to both new and long-term subscribers: I don’t think anyone has reported the impacts of subject line branding on “older” subscribers, who might not need that extra visual subject line cue.

The advantage of removing subject line branding is you move the information on the email’s actual contents to the front and have more space to come up with the right wording to entice interest.

Equally, you might argue that it is precisely the long-term subscribers who home in on the subject line branding to pick your email out in the inbox. Which is why testing is so important here.

Indeed, to avoid repeating myself later: all suggestions in this post need to be tested first before switching to a multiple-template approach based on the length of the subscriber relationship.

Preheader text – the online version

Nearly every commercial email now includes the obligatory line that looks something like this:

If this email does not display properly, click here for the online version

It’s good practice. You never know just how good the receiving device or software is at displaying your email, so it’s useful insurance for a design SNAFU.

But our long-term subscriber has seen that line so often, can we free up preheader space by shortening it?

How about “online version” or “images-on version” or some other text that relates to the longer statement used initially, but which is much shorter?

Preheader text – the permission reminder

Many senders choose to tell recipients where they signed up to get the email, and put this info at the top of the message. They do this in case the recipient thinks the mail is unsolicited and hits the “report spam” button.

You are getting this email because you signed up for it at the AcmeProducts.com website

(I’m not sure it deserves such prominence if you’re operating a truly permission-based email program, but still.)

Again, does your long-term subscriber need to see that so prominently every time? After X months of interacting with your email, are they suddenly now going to start asking questions about where you got their email address?

Perhaps you can move that permission reminder down to the bottom of the email, freeing up preheader space for more valuable messaging?

More on the permission reminder debate here (check the comments).

Preheader text – whitelisting instructions

Another good practice is to encourage subscribers to add you to their address book or safe sender list. If they do, it commonly means your emails have a better chance of getting delivered to the inbox with images displayed in full.

But the same principle applies here. If that long-term subscriber hasn’t whitelisted you by now, is she ever going to? And if she has whitelisted you, you’re wasting space asking her to do something she already did.

We might want to get even more nuanced about this messaging. A personal whitelisting request might be best suited to sign-up confirmation pages and email welcome messages, plus the first couple of emails. Then leave it out.

Then maybe put it back in again further down the road.

Eh?

The motivation for whitelisting a sender is to ensure you don’t miss out on the emails. This motivation is high immediately after signing up, driven by curiosity and the original reason for joining the list.

It’s also high after the emails have established their value to the recipient. So perhaps it’s worth temporarily returning that request to the preheader after the recipient has clicked on a few emails?

(You might argue that if you’re getting a response from the subscriber then your emails are already getting delivered fine, but future delivery success is not guaranteed and every bit helps…)

Image richness

Images can be very powerful, but their use in email has been curtailed by the specter of image blocking. Except if someone has recorded a number of opens on your previous emails, then they likely aren’t blocking images.

So you might send them a more image-rich template. More discussion on the pros and cons of that approach here.

Design surprises

As a final suggestion, maybe it’s worth throwing out something completely different now and then? Templates are obviously a critical part of email marketing. Not least because of the benefits to email production, branding consistency etc.

Does, though, familiarity breed occasional contempt?

Does the same old layout surround the reader in a comfort zone that dulls the senses? Can unusually stand-out content and offers stand out so much when they come in the same packaging as the last 100 emails?

I have no idea, frankly, but I wonder if it might be worth testing what happens when you break your template.

For example, what about a plain text message for a reactivation email or a meaningful message from your CEO to all customers at Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Or a horizontal email?

Or one that is just a massive image (making the recipient curious as to what’s hidden behind the giant blank box?)

Again, the only answer comes from testing.

Costs

Of course, all this theory is wonderful, but let’s not forget costs. Building and managing multiple templates adds another cost factor to the email creation process. So (obviously) if testing any of the ideas, don’t just look at changes to response, but weigh them against the cost and production management consequences, too.

So, any other ways you might age your template? Or anyone tested these kind of changes?

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