Welcome to the Friday Email Review Series. If you’ve missed the reviews from the last few weeks, you can see all past Email Review blog posts here. Not sure what I’m talking about? Learn more about the free Email Review’s in this blog post.

Also, I’m always taking submissions. Be sure to fill out the webform and send in your email to be reviewed next week.

Today’s Email Review screencast is ShareFile (hat tip to Dan London for submitting). The 5-minute Email Review screencast is below.

 

Having trouble seeing? Try going directly to YouTube.

6 Comments About The ShareFile Email

The following points were all covered in the screencast above, but for those that like them written out, see below:

1. Preheader: ShareFile includes a “view in browser” option in their preheader as well as the text “ShareFile May 2011 Newsletter.” It’s a good idea to include meaningful text in the preheader as this is what will appear as the “snippet text” in some email clients such as Gmail. However, I always recommend making that text clickable. Whatever the main call to action is of the email, link it in the preheader. Then, look at your click-through and conversion metrics to see if it’s working.
2. Subject Line: I was not able to see the subject line for this email, but I’d recommend doing an A|B test to see which subject line performs best (see Five Ideas for Email Subject Line Testing). I’m always a fan of matching the main call to action of the email with the subject line, but again, TEST!
3. Friend, Follow, Subscribe (Social Networks): ShareFile does a nice job of making their social networking icons/links stand out. I see many marketers simply slapping the social networking icons in their email and hoping subscribers will (a) know what they are, (b) know what do to, and (c) take action. While not ideal, ShareFile does take it to the next level by at least telling subscribers what to do (Friend, Follow, etc). The next step is the why. Why should I connect with your company on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube? What’s in it for me? Learn more in our Social Sharing eBook. Note: You’ll notice that ShareFile does a better job of promoting the WHY for their social networks near the bottom of this email. Yes!
4. Clean Look & Feel: This email is very easy on the eyes. It’s broken up nicely into different sections. Great use of white space. I’m not normally a fan of big images, but I think it works in this case.
5. Video: I love that they included a video in the email. Remember: Do not embed video into your email as many email clients will not be able to play it. It’s always best to include a clickable image, like ShareFile does here. As an added bonus, you can also then track the click-throughs! One tip for ShareFile is to make this image/video stand out a bit more. It seemed to get a bit lost in the sidebar.
6. Clear Call to Action: Quick. Look at the email again. What’s it about? What does ShareFile want you to do? Pretty clear call to action, right? Notice how they also provide a few different ways to engage with the main call to action – image, links, etc. See #1 above about Preheader for another way to entice click-throughs.

Reminder: All comments, suggestions, and feedback in the email reviews are given without intimate knowledge behind the actual email or program overall. I am not privy to any testing or historical data that may be driving decisions. I’m simply critiquing what I see based on my 6+ years in the email industry.

What did you think of this email? (Pretty good, huh?). Do you have other suggestions? If so, please share below.

Want to have one of your emails reviewed for free? It’s simple. Just follow the directions here. Until next week!

DJ Waldow
Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory

 

Email inboxes are getting more and more crowded. How do you ensure that your emails get noticed? How to you make sure that they stand apart from the rest? If you want your emails to get opened and clicked on, we have just the eBook for you.In the 17 Ways To Make Your Email Stand Out eBook, we review strategy and tactics, creative and design, as well as unique campaigns. There’s a bit of something for everyone.

What are you waiting for? Download the eBook now

  

This entry was posted on Friday, June 10th, 2011 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Email Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.