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Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

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Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#41

Post by bjpbakker »

rqs wrote: post #31

> The plain email—which took no time to design or code—was opened by more recipients and had 3.3x more clicks than the designed email. I think this result needs more investigation. We need to know why people open plain email more than those fancy designed ones, rather than just having those numbers. Designed email, for a lot of companies, is a matter of style, a VI (Visual Identity) for the receiver to remember. It's…

> We need to know why people open plain email more than those fancy designed ones, rather than just having those numbers

This is interesting. Would you have questioned the numbers if they showed the inverse (ie designed emails have higher click rates)?

> a well-designed email could increase the efficiency of email reading as you may already familiar with some email and their layouts

I don't think this is true at all. IMO test emails are /much/ more easy to read, because I can use a consistent font and layout for /all/ my emails instead of reading through every designers view.

> emails which heavily polluted with contents that have nothing to do with me

Yes text or designed emails don't change any of the contents and spam still is spam. Marking as spam and removing is probably the best option :)

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#42

Post by gk1 »

stevoski wrote: post #4

I've been sending plain emails to my list, because I like the ultra minimalism of it. If I've got two sentences to share with my list my email is "Hi" + two sentences + "Bye" + unsubscribe links. Does it "convert" better than styled emails? I don't know. I don't care. Does it do well enough to meet my goals. Yes. There's many things I'd rather be doing with my time than optimising everything for marketing goals.

Good news is that by sending such short and plain emails, you're already getting optimal results.

I agree strongly that there are many better things to be doing than fussing with emails, which is why I'm advocating for _not_ wasting time on design.

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#43

Post by nmstoker »

This is focused on marketing mail, but (anecdotally) for internal notifications I've found people are much more responsive to lightly styled emails.

We've got a mountain of automated plain text emails written by the less literature elements within IT and all look the same. Often it takes even an expert a few moments to distinguish them. But with a little formatting the key details leap out and you can tell that this one is distinct from that one. Of course, it is just one more thing to sign off (as the article raises) but it's a one time task you can do in ten minutes and yields results for months or years

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#44

Post by worble »

MiguelHudnandez wrote: post #39
tgb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users can't really tell that an email is styled or plain before opening it, so if the opened numbers were too different, I'd be concerned that something was up.

Yes, it seems the open rate should be attributed to the subject line or the a/b split parameters more than the design... And with the open rate that significantly affected, all other metrics would be skewed as well.

Could the difference in open rate possibly be attributed to the email no longer being picked up by spam filters / not going to googles "promotions" tag like mentioned in the article?

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#45

Post by iam-TJ »

HappyKasper wrote: post #19

I was turned on to “no design” newsletters by Jeff Bezos’ updates on Blue Origin. They read and feel like a personal note from him, even though I know I’m just an entry on a big list. Since then, I’ve made all important announcements to my company’s customers via this “personal”, no-design style. The reply-to is my direct email address, which I think deepens the personal touch of this style, and prevents me from abus…

Your observation about the reply-to is an important flag.

I almost always instantly delete any email where I see the From: or Reply-To: has noreply@ or the email starts off with

"Please do not reply to this email it is sent from an account which is not monitored"

Unfortunately one of the big transgressors of this are banks and other major service-provider organisations where we have ongoing contract relationships.

My attitude is, if these people do not understand the fundamental purpose of email then, I don't want to deal with it.

In the snail-mail physical postal world - in most jurisdictions - there is a requirement that businesses identify themselves and provide a return or correspondence address.

Just because it's email doesn't obviate this requirement, and pointing to a web-site Contact-Us page is rarely very helpful since that loses context in so many ways.

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#47

Post by paule89 »

I really like plain emails. Often times you have to allow pictures in your email client to load. Be it in the mobile app, you havend received yet a mail from them or you had to reinstall lineageos/custom rom for the X. time this month. So using just plain mail sounds great.

I also like the idea of plain mails minimizing the memory footprint.

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#48

Post by JohnTHaller »

It's gotten so I can instantly recognize the yesware and spam.io templates without even needing to look at the email's html. That plus the prompt to load external images for their 'text only' email that was totally sent by a human and not automatically sent on a 'proven' schedule every week or two in perpetuity. But they're totally not spammers who subscribed your email address to a marketing list without your permission after they bought it from the black market.

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#50

Post by tylerhou »

puffyrice wrote: post #46

The opening rate is irrelevant. The users can’t predict if it’s a HTML or plain text email before opening. It’s just accidentally higher on the plain text side.

The author claims that plain text emails are "less likely to go into the 'Promotions' tab in Gmail" and are "less likely to be caught in spam filters," both of which might increase open rate.
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