Studying email messages is our hobby. That is why we are always happy to see new examples pass by where we can learn from. Because they do well, or because it can be enhanced. This B2B newsletter grabbed our attention. Quite some lessons to gain…
1 The start is not really daring, almost by the book even
We start off with a header where the word “newsletter” is put in front. In the second position the logo and the social media follow in a row. With beneath, as if it’s a printed magazine, a year of publication and a publication number. Probably this is still a remainder from the times that the newsletter was spread in print. This learns us that we have to pay attention every time that the layout in our communicative utterances should be adjusted to the used medium. A ninth publication year in terms of internet is almost the prehistory.
2 The photo is purely artificial
A combination of a banner, a truck and two way too happy people, that should radiate a feeling of reliability. But to us it appears rather as artificially trying to convince. The young lady could just as well come from an image library. Chances are that you just as well bump into the image in a newsletter of a butcher who is promoting a meat fondue. What is positive, is the direction in which both persons are looking. Right in the eyes of the reader of the newsletter.
3 A table of contents, a go or a no-go?
Beneath the picture you end up in an overview. There you get the possibility to jump to the message in the newsletter that has drawn your attention. It’s positive that the reader is provided with an overview. Because the newsletter is rather long. The chance that people scroll all the way to the bottom to read everything is quite small. That is why this intermediate step – although rather a remainder of a classic table of contents in print – is indispensable. A list is always easier to read. But it could always go much smoother, in case bullets were used and the line spacing was a little wider. That way you prevent that rules are dancing on the screen.
4 A rather weird comment
Here the reader is told, without any shame, that the message was sent without asking the readers first. To give you a quick background update, this is a Dutch company in the Netherlands and the message came into a Dutch inbox. When you know that the legislation in the Netherlands is the strictest in whole Europe, we had to swallow first. The double opt-in is the minimum requirement, at least when the addressee is not a customer. In principle this company was in violation. They try to soften the circumstances by directing to the unsubscription possibilities. But if you scroll down, there is no direct unsubscription link available. Only the instructions of how to send an email. The law mentions that you have to offer the quickest and easiest way to unsubscribe.
5 A bit too much of the same
Then the body of the newsletter follows. This appears to be very uniform. Nothing wrong with that. It’s easy readable by the way with a title, a lead and a read more link. The titles maybe could have been a little bigger, definitely what concerns the image. Because currently it is, certainly on screens with a high resolution, rather a color stain than an expressive image. After all, images say so much more and that opportunity has now been left unseized here. The positive thing is that the formatter has respected the European “reading from left to right” thumb rule. The text is at the left, the images at the right.
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