Making your emails more engaging

We all get lots of emails from businesses and groups we are involved in. However, because we receive so many emails, it can be easy to ignore or skim-read them and forget what you’ve read. If you are regularly sending emails to your church congregation, we have some tips on how to make them as effective and engaging as you can.

Keep it short

Most people find it easier to read a whole email if there is less text. Keep the number of notices and topics in your email low and your readers will be more likely to read the whole thing! 

You may need to prioritise what items go in the email or change the frequency of your emails in order to keep them simple. If you are sending one super long email a month, you may get better results if you send shorter emails once a week. 

Use links

Instead of putting lots of text in your emails, why not have a short blurb on the notice/topic and then link to your website or another source for your readers to learn more? You can pique your reader’s interest and curiosity this way, and increase their engagement. 

Just be sure to embed the links in text or images. If you copy and paste a full link into the text, your email may be more likely to be flagged as spam. 

Use colour

Colour blocks can help break up your email into segments which looks attractive and also engages the reader’s eye. If your church has a signature colour in its logo or elsewhere, use this colour in your email. It will help remind readers who the email is from and make it more memorable.  

If you do this, make sure you have a ‘high contrast’ between the colour of the text and the colour of the background (such as white text on black background, or yellow text on blue background). This will make your content easy to read for everyone including those that are visually impaired. Avoid patterns, prints and stripes. 

Use images

Adding images to your emails is a great way to break down the text and appeal to those who learn better with visuals. This could be a thumbnail to your latest YouTube video, an image you are using to promote your events or a team image if you are sharing some team news.  

For accessibility, use alternative text (also known as ALT text) which describes the appearance or function of the image that you are using. For example, what is the image and what is the image about? This can also be useful when the image in your newsletter has not downloaded in the recipient’s email, allowing them to still know what the image is as shown in below example.  

If your emailing platform does not have the option to add ALT text, you can also add it as a caption around the image making sure you are keeping is short yet descriptive. 

Learn more about how to write alt-text descriptions for image accessibility.

Make sure it's readable

Nowadays, many people read their emails on their phone so the text needs to be large enough to read. Too often we receive emails where the text is so small on mobile that we have to zoom in to read it. Some readers may not even bother to read an email if they open it and the text is too small or too low contrast. 

If you keep your text high contrast and an easy-to-read size, it makes your email more accessible and readable for all and will naturally increase engagement. 

We hope these tips help you engage your church congregation! 

- Laura Bligh, CRM and Analytics Manager