A simple way to build a human connection with your newsletter readers
When I read a good newsletter, I end up learning something that I didn’t know before I read it. But when I read a really great newsletter, I end up learning something new and feeling something. Depending on the newsletter, I might feel happier, inspired, or even uncomfortable from a newsletter that challenges me to think or be different.
When looking at traditional engagement like open and click rates it can be hard to capture how what you wrote made your audience feel.
At the end of the day, the goal is to write emails that grab attention, create trust, and leave readers feeling like they want whatever you have to offer (your content, a product, a personal connection).
I’ve been fascinated with learning more about people’s emotional reaction to what we write, and have run a number of experiments to gauge how different content impacts people’s sentiment.
I want to share what is probably my favorite experiment from the bunch.
The Experiment
Our Customer Solutions (CS) team had just won an award for exceptional service (as they frequently do). We were planning on sending an email to our audience thanking them for their business and promoting our CS team if they needed help.
Since this email was so focused on communicating the human, personal care we offer through our CS team, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to experiment with ways to showcase that humanity.
We ran an experiment where half of the test would get a static image of our CS team, and the other half would get an animated gif of the team being their wonderful, silly selves. Other than that, the emails would be exactly the same.
The hypothesis was that motion would let people’s personality shine through more directly, and lead to more positive vibes from our readers.
To measure the vibes, we included a little sentiment widget at the bottom of each email where readers could tell us how the email made them feel.
Care to guess what happened?
The Result
The version with the animated gif generated significantly more clicks.
But here’s the real kicker. The entirety of the increase in clicks was attributed to more people clicking to say the email made them feel happy.
Not only that, but we got direct responses to the gif version saying things like:
“I love the positive, happy energy that I feel when I see this. —- You guys are definitely one of the best out there for support. Thanks for being a group of individuals that make those of us who aren’t tech savvy very comfortable with the whole process. You guys ROCK………Thank you.”
“I loved the little animated group photo. I loved you had two different places to click to cast your vote. Nicely done and modeled for us!”
We’ve replicated this experiment a number of times, and in each case, the animation of a person showing their personality leads to people indicating they were happier than those seeing a static image.
What do you do with this information?
This is not an across the board endorsement for using gifs instead of static images. In fact, there’s research that suggests that gifs can negatively impact your readers perception of you in some cases (like when using an animation of a product instead of a static image).
What I am endorsing is that you use gifs (sparingly) when you want to show that you or your team are real flesh and blood people. And I’m suggesting that you do this by including animations of yourselves doing something goofy, or relatable.
Here’s an example of a gif we included in an email to people inviting them to our Facebook community.
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s how someone replied when we asked them why they said that particular email made them happy.
“You gave me the feeling that you are close to me, that you care about my job, you want to show people how to work better, plus I saw you guys dancing.”
So here’s your next step. Include a gif of you acting like a human in an email where you’re introducing yourself or sharing something personal about you. It could be a challenge you had to overcome in building your business, or the impact you want to have on the world through what you offer.
And include a sentiment widget in your email to see how it impacts people’s reactions. https://blog.aweber.com/email-marketi...
Let me know how it goes.
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