We’ve mentioned recently that you should ensure your marketing email is optimised for mobile opening. Or rather that you should choose a mobile-centred one from the free email marketing templates you have at your disposal.
We’ve also mentioned that you should cut wordage to a minimum. Unfortunately, it is not simply a matter of deleting every other word a few times. You must have a plan of action to ensure you don’t end up with unfocused gibberish.
We’ve previously mentioned the requirements of From and Subject Lines and we’ll mention them again in a while. The bit that comes under them in most mobile devices, the pre-header, should be the way you encourage subscribers to be customers.
It is easier to come up with a list of what you should include in the pre-header than one for what to exclude. It will vary to an extent depending on your email marketing list, but it is generally useful to build on what is in the Subject Line.
This means that you can limit what is in the Subject Line; all it has to do is grab the attention. For instance, put a time limit in the Subject Line, such as 4 Days at this Price – easily scannable, and then explain what you are offering in the pre-header.
You were told in an earlier article to avoid jargon, with the ever present ‘unless your test results show otherwise.’ This is open to argument with regards Subject Lines. Take the General Data Protection Regulations.
You will know this as the GDPR. If you need it in the Subject Line, and your subscribers are also familiar with the contraction, then go with it. If, however, a segregated email marketing list is made up of people who might not then there are alternatives.
The simplest is to use different words. They will probably be less precise, a negative unfortunately, but it won’t confuse. ‘Danger – New Data Rules’; now there’s something to attract those who are not au fait with the technicalities.
It can be useful to consider the Subject Line, and the pre-header as complementary but with different functions.
As always you should ensure that the bit ‘above the fold’, or rather exposed to the subscriber on a mobile phone, is optimised. If you’ve discovered that images work for those on your email marketing lists, then ensure that when your copy is run around the image it isn’t truncated to the level of nonsense.
Choose, or rather opt, for simplicity. Something economical and inexpensive is cheap. Praise is shorter than recommendation and an invoice could be a bill. It is a useful maxim to not use words of more than two syllables pre fold. Change the tense of a verb, eliminating -ing. Or rather, eliminate -ing.
Grammar can be ignored, as above. The final sentence would bring out the green pen of my English literature professor, but you understood the meaning. That is the only requirement. Follow the rules only when they do not conflict with the necessities of choosing words for mobile email marketing.
