Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty
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Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty
6th Edition
- Topics:
This report shows what happened when people used a broad set of newsletters and email marketing messages. We watched and analyzed as they tried to get on and off subscription lists, maintained their subscriptions, and received, reviewed, and reacted to messages in inboxes.
This 537-page report presents 199 design guidelines based on 6 rounds of usability research. Discussions and 535 screenshot illustrations supplement our findings.
Topics covered
- Email use on mobile and desktop
- Managing email and email newsletters
- What users read
- Benefits of newsletters to take advantage of
- Pitfalls of newsletters to avoid
- Discovering new newsletters
- Personal newsletters (B2C) and business-related (B2B) newsletters
- Subscription process
- Link name and placement
- Newsletter names and descriptions
- Collecting information from users
- Confirming subscriptions
- Encouraging new subscriptions
- Frequency and delivery
- Sender information, subject lines, and preheaders
- Content
- Content selection
- Voice and tone
- Personalization
- Keeping content fresh
- Hyperlinks and interactive elements
- Images and videos
- Emojis and Animated GIFs
- Advertising
- Layout and visual design
- Subscription maintenance and unsubscribing
- Unsubscribe links
- Unsubscribe process
- Maintenance options
Types of newsletters tested
- Health (WebMD.com, Babycenter.com)
- News (NewYorkTimes.com, The Atlantic, Weather.com, NPR)
- Entertainment (Dictionary.com, RealSimple.com, Vudu.com)
- Travel (Viking River Cruises, Monarch.co.uk, Lonely Planet)
- Ecommerce (Madewell.com, Nike.com, Dell.com)
- Education (UCBlueAsh.edu, Berkeley.edu)
- Financial (Bankrate.com, Morningstar.com)
- Sports (MLB.com, Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Rams)
- Work-related newsletters (Glassdoor.com, Women in Cleantech and Sustainability)
- Government (New York City Department of Parks & Recreation)
- Non-profits (Water.org, Savory.Global)
What’s new with the 6th Edition?
The 6th round of research touched on all aspects of newsletters and marketing email on both mobile and desktop devices. New guidelines were added and existing guidelines were reviewed, updated, or removed, based on the current state of newsletters and email marketing.
Research method
The information in this report is based on 6 rounds of studies, conducted over 16 years. Usability research methods included:
- One-on-one usability testing
- Eyetracking
- Online and email-based diary studies
- Remote unmoderated usability testing
Representative users tested the usability of 500+ newsletters. The studies took place in the United States, Australia, England, Hong Kong, Japan, and Sweden.
Read the companion report, Marketing Email UX – User Research Methodology, which details our UX research methods for email marketing and newsletter usability.