Ten Inbox Secrets: Results of applying Eye Tracking to Email Marketing

The agency Red C has just published a study titled «Ten Inbox Secrets». It offers the results obtained from an Eye Tracking analysis of 50 emails from up to 8 different industries with more than 100 participants.

The value of this work lies in its empirical methodology, whose conclusions have been tested during the actual experience of reading an email.
   These are some of the conclusions that emerge from the experiment:

• The user shows better behavior in designs that take diagonal reading into account.

• It is recommended to avoid linear templates; they encourage the user to interrupt the scrolling unintentionally.

• The combination of color, image, and graphics draws the user's attention. It is the text that keeps them engaged. The emails that have proven to be most effective in terms of user attraction and retention are those that combined images, colors, and text.

• Deploying different call-to-actions throughout the email encourages clicks and creates in the user a tendency to respond positively to the action.

• Color, font, position, size, and copy all influence the recognition of the CTA and the click rate, hence the need to test different versions.

• Relevant content strengthens the engagement from the user with the brand and is the main factor in reducing the abandonment rate (lows).

• The combination of markedly sales-oriented copy with advice and more informative content is crucial to keeping the user's attention on the email.