Email Newsletter Usability:  A New Study By Nielsen Norman Group

The Neilsen Norman Group well noted for their studies of user interfaces and usability, have completed a new study on Email Newsletter Usability, which includes 79 guidelines for subscription, newsletter content, and account maintenance.  All of these are based not on theory, but rather on actual usability studies just completed.

I’ve been publishing newsletters for 28 years and Email newsletters for about eight years and I was happy that I didn’t find I had committed too many unspeakable crimes against my subscribers.

There’s a lot of food for thought here, some of which is whether EMail newsletter can survive at all, given the sad state of SPAM and EMAil.

NNG gives good advice as to how to give your Email Newsletter the best chance of getting through and actually being opened and read rather than just deleted.  It’s probably worth the price of admission just for that.

I thought the peak into the future – and the advice about content – were the best parts.  The study is available at http://www.NNgroup.com/reports/newsletters. 

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