Email Marketing for Funeral Homes 2: How Long Should Emails Be?

If you caught the first post in our funeral home email marketing series, you may have started working on your subject lines. Today, we’re going to look at some specific best practices for how long those marketing emails should be.

How Do People Read Emails?

The majority of people don’t process emails as they would a novel or even an interesting article. People scan emails, quickly deciding whether to delete, save, or act.

You typically only have seconds to capture someone’s attention, and most people aren’t going to spend more than a minute with a single email. If they open your message and see a wall of text, they’re likely to delete and move on with their day.

Best Length for Marketing Emails

While the specifics depend on your audience and business needs, the best length for marketing emails tends to be “short.” Moderation works here, and that’s true for more than the text. Here are some best practices to consider when it comes to how much to include in deathcare marketing emails.

• Keep text under 300 words. A Constant Contact study notes that emails under 200 words or about 20 lines tend to perform best.
• Don’t max out on links. Pick a couple of important ones, and put most of them toward the top of the email.
• Make it easy for people to scan even your short email. Use bold, color font and other design elements to draw attention to the call to action, as many people will scan right through to that point.
• Limit images. Constant Contact notes that emails with one to three images tend to perform best, but that depends on your audience.

Finally, don’t take any of these tips as hard facts. Every audience is unique, so you need to test various email lengths, formats, and messages to find what works best for yours. These best practices are great places to start testing, but you might find something slightly different works for your deathcare firm.