Sadly, we’ve become a society of readers with ADD. There are just so many demands for your readers’ attention that if you are lucky to get their attention, you don’t want to jeopardize it by overloading them. In other words, if you create an e-newsletter where they have to scroll, they will roll.
The Fix:
Try to keep the length of your e-newsletter to 300-400 words if it’s one article. If you have more you’d like to say, you can always add a link to your website with more in-depth coverage.
If you want to have more articles in your e-newsletter, list the headlines of each article and then have a one or two-sentence description of the article underneath with a link to a more in-depth article on your website. Just like your subject lines, your article headlines will have to be attention-grabbing to get them to click.
This tactic offers another advantage in that most e-newsletter programs have reporting functions so you know who is clicking on what. This lets you know which prospects might be interested in what your company offers and gives you some intelligence so you can do some follow-up.
This was taken from Nobody Reads Your e-Newsletter…And How To Fix It.
Addendum:
When the last edition of this came out, size of an article certainly mattered. With the increased popularity of mobile devices, readers aren’t as averse to scrolling. You still should not overload them with text. For longer articles, draft a paragraph or two and then provide a link to the entire article.
