Because only 19% of e-zines get read thoroughly
Email newsletter subscribers skim 69% of the e-zines they receive, according to the Nielsen Norman Group’s latest eyetracking study.
Subscribers in the NNG study:
- Thoroughly read just 19% of e-zines
- Read the majority of the content of 6%
- Glanced at but did not read at all 6%
“They don’t spend much time, and they don’t read full content,” write the researchers. “The dominant approach to newsletter content was to skim.”
Learn a system for writing emails that get the word out to nonreaders …..
Subscribers skim even more on mobile.
In NNG’s most recent study, mobile newsletter readers reported that they:
- Skimmed newsletters 74% of the time
- Fully read newsletters 24% of the time
- Glance at but don’t read 2% of the time
So which words do they read?
They read the microcontent.
Email newsletter subscribers in NNG eyetracking studies read:
- Headlines
- The first line or two of the story
- Bulleted lists
- Links
They often skipped the paragraphs, sometimes because they were scrolling too quickly.
“Scannability is important for websites, writes NNG principal Jakob Nielsen, but it’s about 50% more important for newsletters.”
So put your message where their eyes are: In the microcontent, or online display copy.
Get opened, read and clicked through Learn a system for writing email newsletters, invites and e-blasts that get the word out. Join me at Inside the Inbox, our email-writing workshop, on Nov. 7-8 in D.C.
Save $100 when you register by Oct. 6.
|