Targeted Email Newsletters Show Continued Strength

According to trends traced in this article, email newsletters continue to be one of the most important ways to communicate on the Internet. They can be a tool for building relationships; for example, users can forward relevant newsletters to friends and colleagues. However, a 2004 study shows that users are highly critical of newsletters that waste their time, and often ignore or delete newsletters that have insufficient usability. The upshot of these results is that layout and content scannability are paramount.

Specifically, the USA-based Nielsen Norman Group used a diary methodology to test participants from 12 states across the USA, along with users in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Researchers studied 101 of the 345 newsletters that participants were already subscribed to on their own initiative, testing users' newsletter experiences over a 4-week period in most cases, and a 2-week period in a few cases.

Some of the factors that influence whether and to what extent a reader might access an e-newsletter include:

• Spam - Increased spam has made people even more stressed and impatient when processing their inboxes. Users have less tolerance than ever for newsletters that waste their time; they often employ their spam filters to avoid newsletters that they no longer want. (Many users consider unsubscribing to be too cumbersome).
• Scannability - Users' most frequent complaint concerned newsletters that arrived too often; the most frequent advice for newsletter editors was to "keep it brief." In a 2002 study, participants read 23% of the newsletters thoroughly; the 2004 study found that only 11% of newsletters were read thoroughly. In 2004, 57% of the newsletters were skimmed; others were either never read (22%) or saved for later reading (10%).
• Immediate Utility - When describing why a certain newsletter was valuable, each of the following reasons were given by more than 40% of users:
  
  • Work-related news and/or activities in their own company or other companies (mentioned by 2/3 of users)
  • Prices and sales
  • Personal interests and hobbies
  • Events, deadlines, and important dates

In conclusion, when users were asked to describe the benefits of email newsletters, 3 reasons stood out, each being highlighted by more than one-third of users:

1. Informative: They keep users up to date (mentioned by two-thirds of the users)
2. Convenient: They're delivered to the user's information central and require no further action beyond a simple click
3. Timely: They offer current information and real-time delivery.

Click here for the full article in Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox.

Click here to read The Communication Initiative's summary of Jakob Nielsen's "Email Newsletter Usability".

For more information, contact:

Jakob Nielsen

Nielsen Norman Group

Nielsen Norman Group site