Forget what the experts tell you… (sorta)

November 20th, 2006 by Kelly Rusk

Now to totally contradict everything I say, I’d like to point you to this article by David Baker on MediaPost called “Don’t Believe everything you hear” basically it says ignore what the experts tell you, about preview panes, images-only emails, email length etc.

Basically it contradicts a lot of stuff I say regularly in this blog…

BUT, the point the article makes, which I 100% agree with is TEST your OWN emails against themselves. It’s very true to - While I DO think you should consider all the above expert topics - afterall, this advice comes from people who live and breath email everyday - however, you should also TEST, test, test your own emails, because just because I know a lot about email in general..doesn’t mean I know anything about your subscribers and what they want.

Secretly, it breaks my heart when I suggest a client that they test something and their response is something like “Yea, but I read this article that says you should always do this…” (ESPECIALLY when it’s something I wrote!)

So in closing I’ll quote the last and most important paragraph from the article:

The moral of this urban legend is, use best practices, studies, and guidance from the experts as a starting point, but don’t consider their advice to be absolute. You need to adjust your e-mail for your target audience and for what you want to achieve. Most importantly, test, test, and test some more.

Posted in Email marketing |