2 builders who never spoke to each other

Reduce a promotional email to the offer and the date

Modifiers, hero images and explanation dilute the one thing a promotional email exists to convey, and stripping the markup also keeps it out of the promotions tab. When the goal is the click, a short email carrying the link outperforms one with the whole piece pasted in.

The method

1. 01

   Send promotional emails as plain text carrying a single offer and almost no words.

2. 02

   Strip the modifiers and the hero image out of a deadline email; the offer and the cut-off time are all the reader needs.

3. 03

   Treat respecting the reader's time as the design constraint for the email, not brand polish.

4. 04

   Strip the HTML and images because that is what keeps mail out of spam folders and out of Gmail's promotions tab, and verify with a free spam-score checker.

5. 05

   If you want clicks, send a short email whose job is the link; if you paste the whole post in, expect the click rate to collapse

What it returned

• 16%

  He notes roughly 16% of email users have the tabbed inbox, and that his plain emails usually land in updates or sometimes the primary tab.

• 3

  Click rates of 3-10% when the full blog post is in the body against 30-50% for a short email such as a book launch announcement; open rates run 45-50% typically, 40% at worst, and once 78% to a segment of about 700

• Sticker Mule's promotional email is six words long

Sources

• Sticker Mule's plain text emailsHarry Dry · Marketing Examples · Sticker Mule's plain text emails · undated
• How I use email for marketingNathan Barry · nathanbarry.com · Send stats · 2013-06-28
• Don't Design Your EmailsGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · Why Plain Emails Work (Better) · 2016-06-28