Emalis.... full width

I had a discussion this morning about the practice of chopping the width of lines in emails to 55 etc chars.

It has never felt right to me. I just went along with it.

For the past year though, I've been alternating.... sometimes full width, sometimes chopped.

So I was curious and tossed questions out.

Because to me, the whole point of doing something like capturing someone's name is to you can customize the email so that they get the sense that you wrote it for THEM.

But intelligent customization in an email dies the instant you fix the character widths to 55 chars. Because it IMMEDIATELY and OBVIOUSLY says "commercial email".

To me, it kills authenticity.

It's completely in-genuine.

I also looked at the only 3 marketers who's emails I do read... 1 alternates like I've been doing, the other 2 go full width.

I then thought of all the cold solicitations that are cleverly semi-customized for me that hit my inbox... if they were chopped lines, I'd immediately think "this was a broadcast, it's a commercial message and this guy put me on a list". But if it's full width, I feel like the email was written to ME.

I decided to completely kill off this 55 character limit nonsense once and for all.

But I asked around first.

Of the responses that came in... one is from a split-testing ninja who has an email spamming background (point is, obviously a very qualified person to give advice on this) ... and the other is Jason Henderson who, I'd rate as the highest or among the highest authorities on all things email marketing. He's a legend on the topic.

Each said "go full width".

I was already "sold" on my theory prior but now I'm definitely sold.

Yet the literature from rehashed and untested teachings (that started back in the mid 90s!!!!) suggest that you should cut your email lines to 55 chars (or the really old school stuff teaches 65 chars... and the REALLY new school for mobile teaches 45 or even 40 chars).

Come to think of it... all JV Notify emails also come as proper full width emails (or at least I'm pretty sure they do).

So this is just some food for thought for other JVNP members... are you chopping the email lines just because "everybody else is doing it"? Or maybe you've ditched (or never even practiced) this arguably bad habit?

Rob, it's interesting that you bring this up because I've never liked to chop my emails. For the same reasons that if feels commercial and not at all personal. I've never been able to like doing it at all. What I do now however, is that I've created a template where my emails are around 700 pixels wide. So they are not quite chopped, but they are not full width. The reason I do that is because full width emails tend to look like a wall of text to some people and then I lose them because they seem to feel overwhelmed by the wide text. Whereas the more narrow column keeps their eyes focused and moving down the page, but just in a more customized way than the standard 55 char email.

^--- Okay. But I don't follow how that's different?

If you're manually grooming the length of an email, it's not "natural".

When a friend emails you (okay, okay... I know... who the hell actually EMAILS friends these days)... but when an out of touch relative who still doesn't SMS or Facebook yet, when THEY email you... it's full width.

And we read it just fine.

As soon as you get into artificially grooming an email, I think you're back to square one of "is it coming across genuine"?

In the IM space, it's not as relevant.

We ALL know you pressed Send in Aweber.

Full width or not... we all know you've got us in one of the mainstream mailing list services.

But when selling to a non-savvy market, ESPECIALLY if you're already attempting to appear "genuine" with customization fields, then why chop the lines?

55 chars or 700 pixels (which is what?? About 75 chars I think?)... it's irrelevant in my opinion. You're still grooming the look and feel of it, making it unauthentic to the reader.

That's a good point. I think I was trying to find a compromise between the two. I couldn't fully commit to the 100% width and I felt that the 55 chars was too narrow so I was trying to find somewhere in between. Sort of like I had created my own email template in outlook that was set to a certain size.

Rob,

You make some good points...

But

Aweber and Getresponse will tell you not to use more than 65 characters per line because different email clients cant read these full length emails without scrolling side to side.

I still believe that by chopping your emails more of them will get read!

Whether it's an email or web page if people have to scroll from side to side to read them less will be read.

I think you need to personally test open rates and analyze the results before coming to any conclusion and I wouldn't be listening to anyone! I would let my own results determine what to go with!

My two cents worth..

To your success,

Greg

haha, you know the odd thing is, because I'm used to chopping my emails
I now write emails to friends as I'm writing this post here.

I think it's a bit easier to read when you chop e-mails to 75 characters or
so, I've never been one to chop more than that, not typically anyway.

However, I think I will test the longer lines now that you mention it... it really is the way most people write, and would look more authentic you're right.

Here is the problem with full line emails and is the reason for chopping the emails in the begining...

Not all email clients are equal. They can restrict the line length to different lengths. When reading online you must give plenty of white space to make it easy to read.

You may keep each paragraph to 4 lines but at full length an email client could cause that paragraph to be 8 or 10 lines and make it hard to read. Thus your emails are then closed without being read.

Formating emails to 55 or 65 characters are very easy to read in all email clients and you can now control how many lines you have per paragraph.

The font may be small when you send the email but may appear large in other peoples email clients making the lines per paragraph even worst.

The reason you should format your email is to get them read because you do not know how they will appear to the reader. Formating gives you more control.

Best regards,
Steve Yakim

I get quite a lot of emails from lists where the lines are suddenly cut off and continue on the next line. Now that kinda looks unprofessional. I've never thought of it, but it seems a good idea to try the full width approach to see if the response changes.

It's also an optical thing...using a fixed width makes the paragraphs look like paragraphs, which makes it somehow easier to read. When usaing full width a paragraph will mostly have 2 or maybe 3 lines.

I have to agree that with most emails you get from any list you can recognize from the first few lines it's a broadcast, but those who subscribe to a newsletter will know what to expect more or less, so I'm not sure that would make it any different.

Andre

Greg re: the "don't listen to anyone, test it". It's a good blanket answer but not practical. I only have so much time, energy, resources to test the many pieces of the campaigns. If I test EVERYTHING, I never take action on new releases because I'm trying to get my 1% to 1.2% in one area or my 4% to 4.5%. If you're operating with one business or funnel, rock on.

My own intuition with roughly 10 years of getting these kinds of emails and 7 years of sending them and the replies from an ex-spammer (he probably knows email marketing fairly well) and the only primary authority I'd trust on email marketing because out of the entire IM world, he's the only one who still heads out to all the Email marketing conferences to actually study this (and gets paid top dollar by every brand name "guru" for their launches and re-launches to handle their email marketing).

To me that's enough to make a decision. I do agree TESTING is the ultimate answer...

That being said, testing WHAT?

Because the scenarios vary.

Which is the other point and clarification I wanted to make.

If you're Joe Expert and you have a cult-like following just twiddling their thumbs, refreshing their inbox page to see if a new email came in from you... then for that guy, you sending a convenient, fast-to-read email is likely your best bet. No question.

But when I referred to email marketing (I didn't clarify, sorry), I wasn't talking about this IM branded-expert guru world.

In fact, who is the target audience?

Savvy internet marketers who have seen it all and know exactly what autoresponders are and what Aweber is?

Or niches? Novices?

If you're mailing to IMers, again, no point in trying to be authentic. You're teaching magic tricks to magicians... they too already know the magic.

But when showing that magic to horse trainers or chiropractors or biz opp "work at home" types even.... is making your emails look like a pretty, scientifically calculated, manicured, commercial mailing going to help you?

Or will it arriving in their inbox looking like an authentic email convert better?

Ask this as well.... if you're capturing first names, why is it? Because you want to use the customization field to better connect with the reader. In niches, this also means many of them feeling like you genuinely sat down to write it for them.

That goes out the window as soon as you chop your lines to pre-calculated 45 characters. Because nobody's mom or friend or associate or co-worker sends them emails like that. You just became a commercial mailing.

And for the negative, easily upset, nothing-better-to-do types on your list... you just became "spam". How dare you invade their inbox with your obvious commercial sales pitch crap you damned spammer! :-)

There are a lot of variables in this debate.

I'm not suggesting an end-all-be-all for every email marketing campaign.

I'm just suggesting that we don't forget to THINK.

Because there are many variations when marketing to a non-savvy audience, using a custom name field but then chopping the email like a commercial email is a great way to be viewed just like the 40 other guys who hit that person's inbox this week.

And regardless of what specific testing will indicate, there's a lot of long-term profit value in a purple cow...

If you cluck, move, act, dance just like every other chest thumping IMer, you get neatly grouped in with them.

If you do things differently and have your readers thinking "oh.... well this is different", you at least got their attention. And you slowly start branding yourself as an outside-the-box type.

Nobody likes following the masses. (The regular black and white cows of IM). You build loyalty and notability faster by being a purple cow. (not to continue stealing from Seth especially since I've never read his book, but it's a great visual of the same point he was trying to make).

FINAL POINT: I didn't do a good job clarifying. My emails focus on higher ticket deals, lower volume. And not to IMers. And also often in niches where people would have no idea what an autoresponder is let alone "Aweber". For my needs, there's no doubt that chopped lines are a mistake.

I just encourage everyone to play around and think of what really works best for their audience.

ALSO recommended... setup a "spy" email address if you haven't already. I have a gmail with just a who's who of marketers on there. Not just in the IM niches. "Gurus" of other niches too. One of the best ways to beat the competition in one niche is to steal (errr... creatively borrow) the best techniques of a parallel business in another niche.

Enjoy your weekend everyone!!

This is an old convo... but I wanted to post a reply.

John Reese is a proven expert with high level knowledge of all things internet business and internet marketing related. He just recently came back into the IM space... naturally I jumped onto his list again (just last week). .... He has sent 3 emails so far.... ALL of them FULL WIDTH. :-) So that further seals this and confirms it. For me, it's full width emails all the way.

Hmmm...hadn't heard about him a long time either....

The whole full width thing makes sense though...being different than the masses.
Although the 1st email I got from him was NOT full width... :p
Awaiting more from him.

Andre

Wow, its so fortunate that I popped over here today :) I have my fav newsletters too and I read others as a way to check whats going on in some areas of IM.

I am just starting a new list and couldn't quite decide how to set it up. I get a lot of emails that appear in different ways on my Iphone and that's where I usually read them - between 5-7am depending on when my hyper brain wakes me with the latest idea - I then have a cuppa and read the mail on the Iphone.

I like the emails that fit on the phone easily. I don't know if that's what Aweber does (or whichever mailer) or what but there are some emails from seasoned marketers that look a bit naff. They don't change size or have strange font and are unappealing to look at.

So I've sort of been studying this and trying to work out what's the best way to set up my emails for my new list. My existing lists are not an issue as they relate to offline business so I don't worry about how they appear as long as the content is useful and relevant.

So am very interested in the opinions and comments on this thread and thank you all for your input (or output :))

Good intro for me to this forum

Thanks, Leah