Newsletter links
May 20th, 2004 by Bill
At first I was puzzled by this post on Debbie’s blog concerning limiting links in a newsletter but then I clicked through and read the item and went, "Oh, that’s what she means."
After reading the piece I was still a bit puzzled but in a different way. She argues the only links to include are those related to the specific action you have in mind. It hadn’t occurred to me to place the kind of superfluous links she is talking about in the actual mailed newsletter. But I guess some people do that.
You see, when I hear "newsletter" I usually think of a mini Web site - the mailing as home page and the items or articles it is going to as the secondary pages. (Yeah … marketers like to call them landing pages but in my experience when someone says landing page it means a usability nightmare that tends to treat customers like sheep).
Anyway … She’s right. In the actual mailed newsletter, you’re nuts if you include links to anything other than the specific page you want someone to go to. But you can and should include links in an article (if that is what they are going to). You want to give the user choices. If it’s about a product, the links should be "more information" or support and so on, but highlight the link that involves purchasing so no one can miss it - including the link in more than one place doesn’t hurt either.
Of course, the newsletters I deal with are sometimes marketing and sometimes support oriented. Depending on the kind of newsletter it is, you take a different approach to links and your additional links are of a different nature.
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