Template Feedback - St. Vinny's View

[knhiggins]

https://conta.cc/3ymw62L

Hello, we are a nonprofit organization with seven St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Stores in our county. Proceeds from our stores fund our charitable programs like a food pantry, pharmacy and family homelessness prevention. Each month, we send an email containing upcoming events, Online Store finds and "RoundUp Spotlight" to our VIP shoppers. As you can see the email is LONG - thoughts?

[Nick_S]

Hi @knhiggins,

Thanks for sharing! I'd say your email is more long than LONG, if you know what I mean? I think we could do some things to shorten it a bit, but you're not in a bad spot! And, the work you do is so important!

For example, under the Events section, maybe you could use the two column/split column layout to have two of the events side-by-side. Depending on the image size/amount text, it might cut a bit of length. Alternatively, you could use a Read More block and just link back to your main Events hub on your website and just call out each event more briefly. I think you could also remove the "in this email" section at the top. It makes it look like a table of contents that would send people further down the email, but just takes them to the same pages they would click on in the actual sections explaining said topics. Or maybe reformat it so it's more of a "Don't have time to scroll? Here's the quick hits." But I also don't think your email is so long that it needs it. That might be a personal preference.

Logo at the top is nice! Branding colors seem pretty consistent. The information in the blue box at the bottom feels a bit plain and not necessarily consistent with branding. You could maybe reformat it and add in other details like the address and contact information for the organization, if that's something that would be useful to people. The blue doesn't feel very on-brand, after looking at your website. Maybe try the lighter teal color I see in the "Helping Our Neighbors In Need" section on your website? Is the RoundUp Spotlight supposed to click to somewhere? I was tempted to click on the "RoundUp" sphere icon.

Overall, I think the email is really not in that bad of a shape. I think some relatively minor adjustments to how things are organized/formatted will help! If I think of anything else, I'll jump back in!

[knhiggins]

Thanks, Nick. I appreciate this feedback!

I will play around with the two column/split and "Read More block" for the Events section. I agree on removing the "In this email" section as I don't think we need it.

Okay, good to know the blue box at the end felt plain. Using a lighter blue is a good idea as yes, looking at our website with that lens, we do use quite a bit of light blue! The RoundUp Spotlight doesn't go anywhere currently, but I'm wondering if it should go to a specific blog post. We could list the RoundUp totals for each month there...

[Nick_S]

I'm glad to hear my advice might prove helpful! I agree with making the RoundUp clickable to somewhere, if you have something relevant to it! So a blog post would be great!

[ACTIVATE]

@knhiggins I agree with @Nick_S in that one way to shorten up a longer email is to start the content in a section but then link to the rest of it elsewhere. I call this the "magazine cover" approach. The best performing emails are those with less content, or at least an easy visual interaction with said content, even it if it a lot. The "magazine cover" approach allows you to include all the topics you want to but truncating the email down to a "digest" where the bulk of the content is actually hosted elsewhere. This is a great strategy for nonprofits and organizations that do need to send a lot of updates in one email!