Special message design for different kind of audience

Every email marketer should know that there are thousands of interests and needs, the same as the world of reaction on email message is quite wide. People decide whether they read or not the email message you send in just several seconds, but their actions vary due to differences in perception. According to how people react on your message they can be divided into 8 categories. Each category can be called a separate audience, which needs special approach. It always may happen a person can be included in 2 or more audiences simultaneously, depending on their mood, time of the day, etc.

So sending the same message to your entire list you should take into consideration, your message will be or will not be read by eight different audiences of people, who have different views of how it should be read. Therefore, sending only one email message to all of your subscribers you should first create it so that it would affect almost the same to all kind of audience. That’s why it is vital to determine what you major audience is. To create several specialized email messages for every audience would take to many resources and the best way would be designing an effective message, due to using tactics that is able to maximize the influence and provide some guaranties that all your subscribers will read and adequately comprehend the message.

Here are the audiences we were talking about:

1. Identifiers. This kind of receivers is always in a hurry. A quick look on the “from” line is enough for them to consider the message for reading or deleting. They try to clear their inboxes as fast as possible, so a catchy subject line will considerably increase the chances of your message to be read. A great design of preview-pane will be an immense advantage that will provide subscribers with the information about email message content.
2. Skimmers. This category of your list opens your email message, but they want to read it as fast as it possible. They mainly read headlines, subheads, calls to action and according to this information they decide whether to act or not. That’s why such parts of your email message as headlines and so on should reflect the main subject of your message. In most cases skimmers will disable your mages, so you have to pay enough attention on designing a proper no-image version of your message with no losses in attractiveness of it.
3. Readers. These subscribers basically read some sentences from the middle of your email message. After this procedure they are ready to decide whether they want to learn more or not about the specific topic discussed in email. This category is more likely to click-through, view all the images and also view Web version of email message.
4. HTML Readers. These subscribers prefer to view your email messages in HTML format, with al the images and graphics. This is also probably the most popular valiant of designing email marketing messages. The HTML version takes more time to be created, but the result is that you influence on comprehension of your subscribers not only through plane text, but also involve their visual perception that can guarantee a better impact.
5. Text Readers. Appearance of portable devices considerably increased this kind of audience and made text format a necessary add on for email messages. Even though it takes you a lot of time to create an HTML format email message, always consider to create a full text format version. Make sure that all the links are good in your text version and the text itself is clear and attractive.
6. Mobile Readers. This category appeared due to possibility that enables to use Internet through mobile phone. It is hard to create a message that would fit all the PDAs. That’s why you should pay attention on designing your email message so that the first several lines would be perfect, because in most cases these lines is all that PDA’s user may read. They are the most likely save the message to read it later on a laptop or desktop. So with just few sentences you have to persuade your subscribers to save the message and later click-through it.
7. Desk Readers. This is the main and the biggest audience. They are the most likely to act on your message. Everything that you do to optimize you email message for others will also work here and guarantee a better effectiveness. But remember that these subscribers can also change their audience from time to time, depending on different circumstances.
8. Searchers. Usually they are members of one of the categories above. They can notice something interesting in your email message but have no time to read it right away and that save the message to read later. If they cannot find your message later it will definitely be overlooked. For these readers you have to include the brand name in the sender address line and offer in the subject line.

To deal with all these audiences you have to integrate all design tactics to create a maximized email marketing message for multiple audiences with different interests, platforms and even with different views on how the message should be read. Such approach will definitely increase your chances for success no matter what audience it is addressed.

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010 : Email Marketing : No Comments