I recently registered a new domain name, but for this one I tried another provider than the one I have for my other domains. I happy with my current provider, but as I didn’t want a web hotel this time, I had to try something new. Anyway, the whole registration was kind of made in a hurry, because it was an idea I got and then after I headed out. From the mail I received, I got the impression that I was going to get an invoice via Snail mail. So I just closed the email without reading all of it, and headed out.

After some waiting I still had not received any invoice, but neither had I taken the time to figure out when I today got a “reminder” to pay. Weird I thought and opened the mail, only to find out that further down in the mail there was a title called “How do I pay?.” But I never got that far down in the email the first time, thus never realized that I could pay online. Rookie mistake indeed, I would have understood that there was an online payment. But as some domain-resellers have your confirm the domain name with a signature by fax or snail mail, I thought that this was some variation of this.

Either way, make sure that you organize your emails so that the things that you really want to be said is not too far down in the e-mail, as people tend to start to read and then just browse through the rest. Believe I have more examples of this, or perhaps you can admit that you also do it?

3 Tips to Make sure that people read what you write:

1. Put the most important things first, or at least a very noticeable notifier of what is coming.
2. Track the click-through rate on all the links in emails (those that your send to many people atleast) to figure out what people read, and how they interpret what you are meaning.  
3. Consider ways to shorten your emails, because people are used to Tweeted information now, 140 char, that is!

Looking at the second advice here is what I’m talking about. Sometimes you put many links after each other in a sentence like: I recently wrote on my blog that I published a video on YouTube. Now, to me it is obvious that it’s only the link under “video” that defines the actually video I’m referring too. But other people might think that the link under blog refers to the specific blog post, or that the YouTube link shows the video on YouTube. You can track or at least anticipate what people think of this sentence by tracking the click-thoughts.

So, the next time you write an email with something important, make sure to start with it!

Any thoughts on this? Personal experiences?

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Tags: E-Mail, e-mail marketing, information layout