AWeber released a blog posting about how an E-Mail compares to a direct mail piece you get from your postal carrier.

This posting is great for those of us who are looking for a visual of what we are trying to accomplish with mass e-mail campaigns.

The Envelope

In order to read a piece of mail, you need to entice a person to open the envelope.  I always open a piece of my mortgage lender or bank although, in most cases, it is an advertisement for more services.  I don’t want to miss a statement or an important notice.

How can I tell it is from mortgage lender or bank?  The address and logo.  On an email message, your envelope would be the same as your From and/or Subject line.

I identify my e-newsletters from regular e-mail in my Inbox by consistent email address.  The subject lines that begin with the name of the newsletter also help.

If you send both special offers as well as newsletters to your subscribers, distinguish between the two types through your subject line.  Include “special offer” or “sale” in your subject.  You don’t want to frustrate your readers so much they unsubscribe to your mailing list.

The Letter Format

After opening the envelope, a reader scans the header and attachment.  At least once a month, I get a promotional letter from my credit card company with “cash advance checks” attached to it.

Although I opened the envelope, I didn’t waste time reading.  Those letters go right in the shredder.

For an email, the subject line and the top five to ten lines of your message are crucial.  Most people use a preview pane to browse through their messages with images turned off.

A well formatted email message remain its formatting although blank boxes can be seen instead of images.   This makes the text easy to read.

The email message will display the alternative text such as “Office Animation eNews” instead of the logo so that a reader knows what the image is.  Use “coupon” and “special offer” in your alternative text for images that pertain to sales.

Include a short blurb of text at the top of your message your readers can scan so they can filter the messages they want to read.  Your newsletter is not going to grab every subscribers attention every time.

Conclusion

You want your subscribers to quickly decifer whether they are interested the topic of your message.  By helping them decide quickly whether they want to read or delete your message, you are keeping them from clicking on unsubscribe.