- People like pictures
- People don't like pictures
- People like to read long content
- People don't like to read long content
- People rather like to click onto links
- People don't like to click onto links
- Same thing with videos...

Seems impossible or unrealistic to please everyone. Yes, it is. :) Or maybe it is not...

Let's try to see the same thing from a different angle.
What is the ultimate goal what we are trying to reach? - We want to change our customer's mind that they start behaving in a way that is profitable for us - start buying from us.

Let's go back to the marketing basic questions: To whom? What? How?
Let's define our auditory, whose mind we want to play with. Heh, sounds tricky? Indeed.
We always suggest that you should have a customer profile at first. Then you know who they are exactly.
Example: man/woman, age, education, income, children yes/no, position, managers/specialist, etc.
After you have described who your customer is you want to affect, preferably 1 specific person, then it is much easier to define what interests him/her.

Then you probably discover that as different people receive lot of emails per day, they rather keep reading headlines and few lines from the content. Probably they read only the title of the email and decide to open it or not. And at the same time these people make a great impact in terms of making decisions on a big scale. So how can we get to these people???

What does our and our customer's experience tell us - set a target, do you want to get good reading statistics or do you want them to read your emails. is it a long term target or a short term target? Shortly you have 2 options.
- If you want good reading statistics in long term, make a relevant title and use pictures and content carriers.
- If you want to deliver your message today, keep your content short in text, preferably into 1 sentence. Use pictures just to give it an emotional touch.

* We have statistics that customers are reading the e-mail from 50% up to 90%. This specific customer's end users are mainly women, they receive emails about clothing, the entire message is shown-written because of the pictures.
* We have customers who avoid pictures 100%. The reason is that they value content higher than any pictures. Their average reading statistics is 20-35%.
* We have customers who mix these components. Their reading statistics vary form 20 to 50%.
Fact is, if the reading statistics is below 20%, it was probably a badly segmented target group and/or the content was not relevant.

Key factors that we have found are:
- content relevance to your customers behaviours is crucial to get good reading statistics.
- if you need to get good results and want to TRAIN your readers open your pictures, use pictures as content carriers.
- if you cannot train your readers, deliver them content in the text and include emotional pictures.
- maintain your statistics and target groups actively - know your customer base, segment, include, exclude according to how they react to your emails.

Don't forget! Email is VERY personal, DO NOT forget to write him/her a VERY personal email.

And finally, if you think we are wrong, just simply send me an email and let's discuss and compare experiences to find out the ultimate truth!