Debbie Mayo-Smith, Managing Director, Successful Internet Strategies

Successful Internet Strategies recently conducted an internet use survey on a sub group of 6800 readers of their online newsletter Your Success.

Demographics
Strictly professionals. Vast majority either run / manage a small or medium sized business or are self-employed. Corporate staff are managerial or higher level.

Survey Results

88% of respondents said they download emails and then shut off their Internet connection.

56% are on a DSL connection; 37% on a 56k modem; 5% slower and 2% have only email at work.

81% prefer colourful (html) emails.

They're loyal. 46% read every article; 48% read it when there are interesting articles; 6% rarely read it.

52% read it when it arrives, 39% come back to it later and 9% print it off.

They're on Microsoft. 88% use Office; 3% on Lotus; 2% on Mac; 7% on other.

The results flew in. 40% responded to the online survey.

These results have significance for any business using email to correspond or market with customers or prospects.

Seven Important Lessons to Take From this Survey

1. HTML vs Plain Text
At least 90% of your audience have the ability to receive html emails (html is the use of colour, formatting and graphics), and the survey show 81% prefer it. Our subscription base has only a 6% plain text distribution. So why email to the lowest common denominator? However, if you are sending your communications to large corporations, or government departments, some do not accept html emails, only plain text. My advice is to call the webmaster and find out their policy before putting a number of their employees on your mailing list. Only people on '95 programmes such as Outlook 95 cannot receive html. People on Outlook 97 will have to open the colourful emails through Internet Explorer, and everything from 98 on will open straight in the inbox.

2. Use of Graphics
It's important to limit or eliminate graphics completely if most of your audience will be logging off after download. Why? Because emails cannot "Embed" graphics. Emails only carry the links to the graphics which are actually hosted on a website (only people on MS Office 2000 and above can see emails with embedded graphics). That's why when you look at a web page or an email offline you see a square white box, and you get a prompt to hook back up to the Internet (so the email or web page can grab the image). People get annoyed by the prompt. Our survey found a whopping 88% downloaded, then logged off sometime thereafter.

So what is the true price of putting your company logo on the email if it annoys readers and they don't see it anyway? The Poynter Eye Tracking study conducted in the USA found that while 92% of people read the text on news sites, only 22% looked at the graphics. Do you really need images?

3. Content
Many marketing emails and newsletters will include an initial paragraph of an article, then have the remainder linked on a website. If your readers are logging off or printing the email - will they go back to the website for the rest of the content? Think about it.

4. Write and Design for Skimming
Are you writing your content for ease of skimming? 48% said they read only what's of interest to them. Try to make it easy for them to digest quickly by giving them an index, book marking articles, bullet pointing and having your first paragraph written like an executive summary.

5. Make it Valuable
Try to limit your unsubscribes by ensuring the content of your email is valuable to your audience. Write with personality, but from their point of view. To tell you the truth, they're not interested in you, your products, your services. They're interested in themselves. So whatever you write - do it from the perspective of what's in it for them, what's their benefit.

6. Make it Easy
Our survey got such a great response rate because we embedded it straight into the email. We eliminated the need for them to click to a website, or even write in answers. It was as easy as click, click, click and send right from the email they were reading. In turn, we got an email notice when someone answered the survey - and the responses went straight into a database, eliminating a massive amount of clerical work for us. Can you imagine typing in almost 3000 survey responses?

7. Great Results from Email - You'll get a good response from a well designed online survey because it's easy for the reader, you've taken a lot of the extra work out of their hands and you already have a relationship with them. Every email we send is personalised, so additionally when we sent out the newsletter / survey, each reader felt as if we were speaking directly and personally to them. Do you do that?

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Debbie Mayo-Smith is the author of Successful Email Marketing Your Complete How-To Guide. She's an International email and internet marketing expert, a Keynote Speaker, Author, Consultant, Website strategist and Workshop Presenter. You can subscribe to her online marketing and business development newsletter by emailing debbie@successis.co.nz