Challenge
Our goal is to increase engagement with our newsletter and encourage users to click on its content. We aim to improve the open rate and click-through rate of our newsletter.
Results
In one year, we went from 29.08% open rates to 32.32%.
On top of that, we also increase the click rate and the reading rate:
How did we get there?
To achieve this increase, we made a lot of changes based on hypotheses and ran A/B tests. The email that showed higher metrics was considered the winning one and its changes were fully implemented for the next sends.
First change: subject line
In order to increase the open rate, we decided to review the copy of the subject line. We conducted experiments where we added emojis, mentioned famous events, and used high-impact words. The results were significant:
Second change: information hierarchy
The second change we decided to implement was related to the information hierarchy. We decided to prioritize and display high-value information at the top of the email, which is a natural approach to improve engagement and make sure that readers can easily find the most important information.
Third change: anchors
To make it easier for users to access our content, we also decided to implement some anchors at the top of the email. This improved the user experience (UX) of the email, which had a great impact on the metrics.
Fourth change: colors
Next, we experimented with the colors of the email. Our brand has two main colors: red and green. We changed the color of the email header to see if it would have an impact on the metrics, but the results were inconclusive. However, when we changed the color of the call-to-action buttons from red to green, we saw a negative impact on the metrics.
After some investigation, we realized that this was due to the lack of accessibility of the green buttons in dark mode.
Conclusion
All small changes have an impact on design, whether positive or negative. The main tip I could give here is to change one element at a time to truly identify the impact of the change. Another piece of advice I would like to share is that design is an ongoing process, and if one change works today, it might not work anymore tomorrow. As designers, our role is also to keep that in mind.
