Below are key items to consider when creating message content:
- Add to Address Book – Encourage readers to add you to their address book by including a short message above your header image. For example: “Please add us to your Address Book.”
- Header Image – The top header image should be a reasonable size and should not push the content down.
- Personalization – Address readers by their name (Dear <first and last name>).
- Relevancy – Explain why they are getting the message and how it’s relevant to them.
- Call-to-action – This is the main paragraph of your email containing only the length of survey, incentive, and survey link.
- Privacy – Explain what the survey will be used for. Perhaps include a link to your privacy policy webpage.
- Physical Addresses – Include your physical address at the bottom of every email. This is one of the requirements to be compliant with anti-spam regulations.
- Special Characters – Do not use any special characters, such as ! ? # $. However, if you are offering a monetary incentive, it may be acceptable to use a single dollar sign.
- Scripting – Ensure that CSS scripting is limited to font type and font size. Furthermore, there shouldn’t be any other scripting, such as Java, as that might make your message mistaken for spam.
Did you write the best possible message? Below are some quick checkpoints for you:
- Skimmable – On average people spend only 2-6 seconds reading an email to judge if the message is relevant to them. Therefore, the text should be very skimmable.
- Don’t use all images!
- It is important to have text in your messages. Although all-image messages can look quite beautiful, ISPs consider all-image messages as spam since spammers normally don’t include text.
- Furthermore, ISPs normally disable images by default, so if your message is all images, then readers will just see a blank screen when they open your message. This is another important reason to have text in your message.
- Aside from your top header image, the entire message body should be in text.