What if a few simple tweaks could give you more newsletter subscribers, opens, and reads?
This isn’t a magic formula. It’s simply removing obstacles that are known to STOP people from following through. Whether that’s following through to complete your author newsletter signup, following through to open your email, or following through to read that email once they open it.
The obstacle we're talking about today is consistency, especially visual consistency. It is an essential part of your brand, and it’s important to keep this in mind for your newsletter strategy.
Every time you have contact with your target audience (this is called a touchpoint in marketing land), your potential reader makes a split-second Yes/No/Later decision.
“Later” can often mean never, so it’s important to help your reader say “Yes” at every touchpoint. We’ll talk more on this in a couple weeks.
- When a potential reader picks up your book at a retail store, they make a decision. Yes, No, or Later (Not Now).
- When a potential reader comes across a social media post inviting them to subscribe to your newsletter, they make a decision. Yes, No, or Later (Not Now).
At all these possible touchpoints, potential readers are making super quick decisions. Will they follow through with the action you want them to take? (Buy, subscribe, review, share?)
Anything that hinders a successful follow-through is an obstacle.
The more you can eliminate obstacles, the easier it is for potential readers to say Yes to whatever you’re offering.
Think of these obstacles as STOP signs. They cause your audience to hit the brakes.
Visual inconsistency is a STOP sign.
If you go to the store and see a Coca-Cola bottle with a different logo, you STOP. This is NOT the scripty font recognized around the world.
What is this? How is this different than regular-logo Coke? Is this really a Coca-Cola product? Or a knockoff? Can I trust this?
While your brand may not carry the weight of Coca-Cola, the same principle is in operation when your target audience comes across your brand. Inconsistency will make them STOP and question.
What This Means for Your Newsletter
Applying this to your newsletter, your subscriber invites, ads, landing pages, subscriber forms, and newsletters should all be visually consistent. You are taking your potential reader by the hand, walking them through each touchpoint. At every point, you want to assure them with a consistent visual experience. Especially online, when people have their guard up.
By keeping your design elements consistent with every contact point, you are affirming, Yes, this the way. You can safely take the next step.
Am I exaggerating the impact of visual design? How important is it, really?
Remember, these Yes/No/Later decisions happen in an instant.
How many decisions do you make every day? More than you think. Every email in your inbox calls for a decision: Ignore/Delete/Read now/Flag for later. And that’s just your inbox.
You make decisions online all day:
- Should you click on a Facebook post to read an article?
- Should you click to watch the video?
- Should you tap that photo to enlarge it?
How much time do you spend on each of these micro-decisions? Minutes? (You’d never get anything done!) You decide in seconds, sometimes fractions of a second.
Your target audience is making hundreds (thousands?) of decisions each day too. We’ve all developed a filtering system for our own sanity. We don’t have time to labor over every small decision, so we simply ignore much of it. It never makes it past The Filter.
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