Results from our #Emailweekly test

Results from our #Emailweekly test

We often have clients asking about ‘the email fold’, where it should be, and what should be above and below it.

 

The concept itself is outdated for digital communication, as users we are so used to scrolling being part of our daily activity, with most phone apps now requiring the user to scroll, why should email be any different.

At ActionRocket we design mobile first, with the majority of our clients opting for the purposely designed scrolling email, with the goal being to include interesting content throughout the whole email not just in the hero. The scroll can be used to entice readers down the email, encouraging them to engage with the content. We recently wrote about the Blue Planet II email we designed, this email was full of interesting facts enticing the user to scroll. We used the hero module as the envelope, building anticipation and leading into compelling content, making the user want to scroll to find out more.

With the many different sized devices and screen sizes now available, it makes it difficult for us to distinguish where ‘the fold’ would even be within an email. With that in mind, we decided to use our #EmailWeekly subscribers as our Guinea Pigs!

We used last weeks newsletter to try and determine where users see the fold across different devices and browsers, each line was a separate CTA collecting information on where the fold appeared for email recipients. We also collected data on how many recipients tapped ‘View entire message’.

 

What did we find?

The results have shown that around 410px would be our ‘email fold’, receiving 12%of  clicks within the first 25% of the email. Although there did continue to be an even spread of clicks between 410px and 1600px, with 80% of recipients continuing to engage this far down the email. This then increased slightly towards the end of the email, most likely due to Desktop opens. With 8% of users still clicking between 1600px and 1700px.  0.4% of Gmail users also clicked on the fake ‘View Entire Message’ call to action we added especially for Gmail – showing that a very small number who receive a clipped email do click through.

Knowing we have a very engaged email list and this will have been a contributing factor, we have learnt there isn’t anywhere in #EmailWeekly where the recipient doesn’t click (Even the unsub)! We’re aware some recipients did click more than once across different devices, and we hope this made the experiment even more insightful.

1500 Clicks in our experiment

Our View Online CTA received the highest amount of clicks at 125, this always generates a high CTR for us and is why we continue to place it at the top of the newsletter.

 

Our recommendations

  • Use clear information hierarchy and make the scroll seem like second nature. Lead with most engaging content, but don’t try to cram everything in in the hero.

 

  • Keep UX at the forefront of design, lead with branded content (header / logo). Single focused content modules help the user scan content easily. Keep the View Online at the top of your email if it receives high CTR, otherwise A/B test!

 

  • Entice the recipient with easy to digest content, ensuring it can be understood quickly and on the move across different devices.

 

  • Make the action easy to act upon, the user needs to understand the message as well as being excited by the design.

 

  • Keep it trustworthy, we don’t want your emails going into junk, don’t go too heavy on the images.

 

Bex Highfield
Marketing Manager @ Action Rocket



  • http://www.spowart.net Nicholas Spowart

    Thanks for posting the result. I was a participant. Was curious of this customer scrolling perspective versus business.

  • Lisa Kaneff

    I’m curious about the View Online clickers. I wonder if there’s a conversion opp, do they convert at a different rate than the email clickers? Curious if they would click straight through to the LP if that link wasn’t there. Hmmm….