From SXSW: What’s your email’s ah-ha moment?

We heard Daniel Burka (of Tiny Speck, formerly creative director at Digg) and Rob Goodlatte (product designer at Facebook) give a talk about how important the first fifteen minutes of your experience with a product is. It was great content for us, of course, as we’re always trying to make Emma’s service easy for folks to use from the moment they first log in. But among the many great points they made, one seemed as relevant for email marketers as it did for software developers.

What’s the ah-ha moment?

Goodlatte told the story of Facebook’s user testing as they tried to improve the registration process. Their research and development team recorded the eye movements and faces of folks as they signed up for Facebook for the first time. In one woman’s case, they watched her have a not-so-great experience. She got lots of error messages. She had an invalid email domain. She was confused. That was all before the ah-ha moment. She got to the point in the registration, after she’d filled in her high school and college information, that Facebook showed her pictures of folks she might know. When she recognized an old friend from high school, her face lit up, she leaned forward in her chair and she grinned for the rest of the registration process.

It was an ah-ha moment for the Facebook team, too. They got to see this woman realize how their technology was worth her time. In fact, she stopped relating to Facebook as technology altogether and saw instead the value of reconnecting with old friends. With her in mind (and a lot of other users), they redesigned the setup process around that notion and eventually saw a 5% lift in the registration process.

So, what’s the ah-ha moment in your email campaign? It’s the moment folks stop relating to your email as just another email and instead find something that’s worth their time. Have your ah-ha moment in mind when you first start your email design and content, so you can introduce it in a way where your subscribers will find it in the first few seconds of reading your email.

Maybe it’s an article that speaks to a problem they’re dealing with at work. Maybe it’s a discount or a special offer. Maybe it’s hand-drawn illustrations that accompany each news story. Or it’s something less tangible, like a certain tone you write with or the unique way you personalize your campaigns. It’s different for every organization, and it may change from email to email, but it’s about connecting the point of your email to the delight of your subscribers. After all, you’re not just sending an email. Like the team at Facebook, you’re designing an experience, connecting with people and inviting them to engage more with you.