Enudge has many features to help you send out engaging emails, which grab the attention of your audience, and then allow you to understand how your audience are interacting with your messages.
In this article we will analyse an actual Contactpoint Newsletter sent to our clients using Enudge. (Contactpoint is the creator of Enudge).
How many of these features are you using inside your Enudge email campaigns?
A great subject line ... this one uses a question in order to arouse curiosity. Many regular newsletter emails have a subject of "XYZ Newsletter" - you can do better than that! The "news" aspect is referred to for the sake of consistency but isn't the key part of the subject. The subject isn't too long as to be too hard to read.
The text in this position is actually from the "Pre-header Text" on the campaign, and will appear in the 2nd line of text in your mobile phone email list. It serves to further encourage a person viewing your email via a mobile phone to open the message.
Update July, 2022: the pre-header text no longer appears in the body of your emails. For more details on pre-header text, please read this article.Allowing your contacts to 'View in Browser' will ensure that those who are using a less well behaved email program still have the opportunity to see the full message in all its glory. When the reader clicks on this link it also indicates they have opened the email, helping you understand the level of engagement.
Allowing your contacts to 'Share in Social Media' allows you to see who is sharing in social, and how many more people are reading your email, and hopefully taking action, because of such sharing. People who share your emails in social media are your advocates. Unless your email campaign is private or to a closed group, you should immediately share your email campaign in your own social media accounts in order to obtain as much exposure to it as possible.
The logo here is embedded in the email campaign, so it will appear to your readers even if they haven't specifically chosen to download images. This is included in your Enudge campaign using the 'logo' field in the Campaign Details screen. The logo in this example has a background colour of light grey so that it blends in perfectly with the background of the email message.
The hero image sets the scene for the rest of the email message, and helps explains to the reader the topic of the newsletter - a picture can speak a thousand words. Many email newsletters are jam packed with a variety of topics and random events; this will be hard for the reader to take in and may cause your contact to stop reading this and future emails. Instead, focus on one key theme and build your newsletter around that theme. Your audience will likely be happier to receive more emails on just one theme, which they can consume quickly, compared to less frequent newsletters which have many topics and require a lot more time to read.
The main heading of the email campaign supports the subject line, and further builds interest to encourage the recipient to keep reading. This main heading is following by a personal message to the reader, explaining the key message of the email.
8. Each point within the newsletter is separated clearly, given a heading which creates interest as well as introducing the topic, and a hyperlink. Even though this email campaign is a newsletter, we are not tempted to include lots of long sections of information within the email. Instead, each specific topic within the themed newsletter is expanded in a blog post on the Contactpoint website. A summary / teaser is included in the email, with a hyperlink to read the actual blog post. A click on a particular topic allows us to track interest in that specific topic by that person.
9. Each point has a hero image which helps to explain the topic, and breaks up the potential monotony of text. You could also use this image as a place to repeat a call to action such as "sign up for our workshop".
10. The link to the blog post is added to the title of the blog, rather than including the full URL which is important to inspire click through and avoid link masking issues. As mentioned above, the fact that the reader must click to read the blog allows us to track interest in a particular topic and then potentially send follow up emails to those people. Linking out to a blog post allows the reader to engage with the content via a comment on the blog, and to read other people's comments.
11. Links to social media accounts and also to the Contactpoint Website are provided in the footer area. Emails are a great way to reach your customers, because it is less likely that they will be missed compared to an update in a very busy social media feed, however, some of your contacts will want to engage in the conversation in a more chatty environment.
12. To give the email campaign structure and a little more colour, a bottom bar is used... this will appear above the standard text and grey line which is automatically included in each Enudge campaign.
13. The automated sender details included at the bottom of every Enudge email is required in order to comply with the Australian Spam Act 2003. You can change the contents of this via the Campaign Settings screen. This text is centred within this email message because 'Centred' alignment was chosen for the logo on the Campaign Details screen. The centering flows through to the next section of the email.
14. Finally, the standard email actions are embedded by Enudge for every email campaign. The Unsubscribe link is necessary in order to comply with the Australian Spam Act 2003 and other country's anti-spam laws. The 'Update your Preferences' gives your contacts other choices including specifying what types of emails they would like to receive, however, this is achieved by you setting appropriate categories and clearly describing these for your contact. Only categories marked as 'public' will be shown to your contact, along with the description that you give the category. This allows your contacts to opt out of certain types of communications, but still receive others, rather than completely unsubscribing from your list. Other actions included in this section include making it easy for the recipient to forward the email to others and simultaneously removing tracking against the original recipient's email address. You can add a link to 'forward this email' within the body of the email message as well.
You can't see it in the images shown above, but this email campaign is also mobile responsive, ensuring that you can easily read it on a mobile phone, or a desktop computer.
As mentioned at the start, we have been analysing an email newsletter. If your email campaign is about a sale in your online store, or an invitation to an event, there will be some differences in the way we would structure the email. However, all the features described are still applicable.