Why Your Marketing Emails Need Less Marketing Content

Adding media can help reduce the amount of content needed on an email and improve ROI on campaigns

Emails are the perfect channel to get your sales message across. They are easy for audiences to digest, they can sit in inboxes until the subscriber is ready, and you can track results. All these reasons make emails one of the best performing digital channels for ROI.

However, one of the biggest mistakes that small businesses make when they’re creating emails is to put too much content in the copy.

Email design and content can be pivotal in making a campaign a success or failure. And while some small business owners might think that more is better – audiences tend to prefer the opposite. In fact, emails with too much content can lead to poor sales and high unsubscribe rates.

But why might audiences not like too much content in an email? Here are some of the top reasons, and how you can turn it around without losing any of the power of email marketing.

1. Audiences Have Little Time To Read Too Much Content

One of the biggest reasons is that too much text takes time to read and audiences don’t want to spend hours reading. They want to know what’s important, quickly, and what they need to do next to solve a problem, find out more information, or learn something new.

There are several ways you make it easier to get a message across. Firstly, you can break up long pieces of text into little sections with clear headers explaining what is being said in each section. Audience members with the least time might then skim-read your email, deciding what’s important to them based on the headings.

Another option is to use images to communicate your messages. Images can portray more than words in a given space and can be read and understood faster by audiences. So they make a great option.

2. Audiences Don’t Want Too Much Information

Audiences really only want to know what’s important to them. You might have a great backstory as to why you’re celebrating your business’ five year anniversary, but to your audience, that story isn’t that important. They want to know what the point of the email is: i.e. what’s in it for them.

By all means, write your incredible story, but put it on a landing page for those interested to read it. On your email, be short, clear and very concise. That way you can keep audiences happy and get them to take actions on your emails without losing their interest.

3. Too Much Content Can Seem Pretentious

Audiences don’t want businesses that make themselves seem more than they are. Emails with too much to say make the business sending them look too pretentious. This can lose you trust. Your subscribers will look somewhere else.

Instead, you should be focusing on ensuring your audience feel as if you are all part of one team. They want to know that you see problems from their point of view. Keep your content grounded to ensure you do this, by losing the jargon and not talking too much.

4. Audiences Want To Read Content From A Human

Too much text just looks like a book, something that’s impersonal and not unique to the reader. When you write less text and content, you might find that your audience believe the email was a personal one, something that was developed for them.

This, with other personalisation options for your email, can help you improve your campaign’s success.

Conclusion

Don’t be the business that falls into the trap of having too much information in email campaigns. While you might think you are giving audiences everything they need to make an informed decision, you are more than likely just giving them a reason to unsubscribe.

Be more concise in your email marketing campaigns and see how your success grows. Use images, graphs, videos and other tools to help communicate your message and never write too much.

How do you make emails more concise? Have you ever received an email with too much content?

Let us know in the comments below.

Tagged in: content design, email campaigns, email content, media content