What do readers look at in your email?

Did you know that people don't just click on links in an email, they click all over the page, even on blank spaces? Or that only about half the people who view an email actually make it to the end?

These are among the findings of a 2006 email Eyetracking Study carried out by Marketing Sherpa as part of its 2007 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide. Just as it sounds, eyetracking measures both how the eyes move around the screen and what they fix on. This information, together with the monitoring of mouse movements, can highlight a number of interesting issues for email marketers. This study revealed some fascinating insights, for example:

- Images are important. An email with a relevant image got double the attention than the same email without: people actually spent longer looking at the words, too.

- Although people tend to click all over the place on at HTML email, text emails focus the reader more and only the links are clicked on

- People don't read whole sentences or headlines. They read the first few words and the brain 'fills in' the rest. The same is true for paragraphs: the first is the most read. So it's worth getting to the point sooner, rather than later

The samples involved in this study were small: eyetracking is still quite a high tech, labour intensive process. And the conclusions are predictably non-committal: yes, the positioning of elements on the page affects how people interact with email. But it all comes down to trialling and testing to see what works best.

Tried and tested content ideas

In the last eTip I argued that an email newsletter should be seen as a long term marketing tool, not just a vehicle for sales messages.

That means including a good proportion of non-promotional content - some would say as much as 60%.

Which is all very well, but what if you're just selling something less than glamorous, like spare parts for washing machines, or tax advice, or plastic cups? How do you find the inspiration for engaging, interesting, valuable non-sales-related content, month after month?
Here are a few tried and tested content ideas:

• Behind the scenes: how a product is made, where it comes from, how it's transported, who's involved.
  
• Did you know: a (genuinely) interesting or useful fact
  
• Insider tip: give away your expertise for free
  
• Other readers: an example, issue or success story that readers can empathise with
  
• People & animals: recurring characters, putting faces to names, shaggy dog tales
  
• Backgrounder: putting your products or services in a wider context, how the business started
  
• Jargon buster: de-mystifying things, letting the reader into an 'inner circle', self-deprecating humour
  
• Simple competition/giveaway: something that involves people going to your website or reading your brochure can work well!

There has to be a point to your non promotional content, of course. It must have some relevance to your readers and to your products/services. (Sounds obvious, but it is possible to lose sight of this!)

You want people to read it and think 'that's interesting / enjoyable / useful enough for me to want to open and read the next newsletter.' Over a period of time you also want them to think 'these are people I respect /trust /could do business with.'