Email Tips

Future home for Email tips and best practices

There a lot of aspects to sending an Email Newsletter, and we want the missives we send to be helpful and desired by the recipients!

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To, From, and Subject

TO

Probably the most important factor is sending to the right group. Except in very rare occasions we only ever want to send to a single branch. Currently this will likely be the FIRST thing you do.

MFRL Mailing List > Group or new segment > Branch Events - one of - YOUR BRANCH

In the To step you probably also want to personalize the "To" field. I recommend using the Firstname and Lastname merge tags (It looks like *|FNAME|* *|LNAME|* )

FROM

Another thing to consider is the From fields. The actual email address should always be noreply@mfrl.org however the "Name" is important too. Consistency is important here for a number of reasons. I'd highly recommend either leaving it as NoReply at MFRL or changing it to No Reply at <branch library name> and endeavoring to use the same From Name every time. The No Reply is important as we don't want patrons replying to the email but also many will use the sender's name to filter the emails they receive.

SUBJECT

A huge factor in email is the subject. This one is a bit harder to perfect, but people are more likely to open an email that has a subject which catches their attention. Many people get a TON of email daily, so having our stand out can be helpful. It’s worth noting that the TITLE of your campaign isn’t seen by the patrons unless you also make it the subject. Some things it might be worth trying for your subject line: Promote your biggest program for the week, or the one that will be happening soonest (like if your email is going out on Tuesday and you’ve got program Wednesday). On the flipside, keeping some consistency is great for the people who already open many of the emails. Here are some examples that I might try (and again, different branches might find more success with different styles, so it’s worth trying variations. Though if you ARE going to try variant subjects AND variant times, test separately otherwise you won’t know if your 2nd email was more successful than your last one because it was sent on Tuesday or because it had a great subject.

Here are some examples that I might try (again made up for examples sake):

• [MFRL Blacksburg] 11/8-14: D&D for Teens tomorrow, more events inside.
• [MFRL Meadowbrook] Are you a writer? Join our creative writing group…
• [MFRL Cburg] Can you make Soap out of Playdough? It’s likelier than you think!
• [MFRL Floyd] Ready for Christmas? Check out some music from Hoopla, details within.

Oh, and did you know there’s a 2nd subject line, the technical name is “Snippet Text” or "Preview Text". It mostly shows up on mobile, though some email clients will show it. On the templates, if it hasn’t been changed, it reads “In about 6-10 words describe something that will entice people to open this email.” This is a great place to put a call to action for a 2nd thing about your newsletter. Keep in mind that for some email clients the longer your subject the less of the Snippet will show up (a good reason to try and keep your subject lines short and punchy!)

WHEN

There are two more factors that can greatly affect how many people read your email: Time sent and Day of the week sent. People’s email checking habits often change on the weekend so while 10-11am and 2-3pm might be the optimal times in general, the former might be more likely to garner opens on the weekend and the latter during the week. As for DOW, for non-profits, the top days are Generally Tuesday, Thursday and Wednesday in that order. Confusingly, Saturday is more likely to get your email opened, but Tuesday you’ll likely get more clicks. I’d recommend trying different times and days and see what works best for your branch. And while I’d certainly recommend sharing any info you learn between branches, it’s worth noting that what’s true for one, may not be for the other. Maybe folks in Floyd are most likely to open their email on the weekend while Tuesday afternoon is best for Bburg and morning is best for Meadowbrook. Note, all three scenarios are entirely made up by me. Finally remember that people's habits change on holidays, some will be more likely to check their email while others may ignore it entirely. Consider sending newsletters that would "normally" go out during a holiday a few days early.

Content

All of this and I haven't mentioned content, but that's not because it's not important. It might be more important than any of the above (aside getting the segments right). And this can be confusing and hard to get right here are a few things that will lead to a better email:

No text that is only in pictures

There's a broad spectrum of reasons for this directive but the two most obvious ones are:

• ADA compliance! Anyone with an assistive device will literally not be able to see your content. This is one reason Alt Text is so important.
• Anyone who doesn't download pictures in their email won't be able to see your content. There are many legitimate reasons a recipient may not wish to download pictures whether it's a spotty connection, low data quota, security concerns or something else.

Include Links

Advertising a library event? Link to it in libcal. Promoting a resource we offer through our website? Link to the page where that resource is offered (some resource require following a link from our website rather than visiting directly, so this is safer). With so many things being online these days it's a safe bet you can provide a link to whatever it is you're trying to get our patrons excited about. And if you've got a picture, make that whole picture a link as well as including a link in your text. Try to avoid putting links in the Title/Heading, or having the entire text of your description be a link.

Check your email in different versions

You'll want to check how your email looks in at least the 3 most common formats "Mobile, Desktop, and plaintext". Really it's worth getting an understanding of how your email might look different on Apple vs Android devices, tablet vs phone, older vs newer devices, yahoo vs gmail vs iCloudmail vs outlook. All of these factors can affect how your email looks. Once you get a feel for this, you don't need to send a dozen test messages for every campaign, but I'd still recommend sending at least one test every time, and ideally to someone other than yourself. Library staff own a variety of devices so getting a different guinea pig each time also makes it more likely you'll find weird issue (IE email looks fine everywhere except gmail on android phones).