Can everyone understand? Testing the understandability of texts using the Echonity platform - Partf II.

Newsletters are a very frequent form of communication, either internal or external. It usually takes on the form of a report containing news concerning the activities of a business or an organization. But is it effective? Can the receivers understand what you are trying to convey to them via newsletters? Is the format interesting enough or does it go straight to the bin folder? Find out through using the Echonity platform! It will give you insights on what needs a change and what is working well.

For several of our clients we tested the quality of articles in their online newsletter that is to be sent to their customers. The subject of the email that the newsletter was to be sent with was tested as well.

We asked our respondents: Are the articles interesting enough for the reader? Do they carry added informational value? Is the text clear and comprehensible? Do the pictures and photos match the texts? We also encouraged the respondents to suggest topics for articles, to see what they are interested in.

We let the respondents read four different articles that were each dealing with a different topic. After we asked about the articles’ potential to succeed in the newsletter and their understandability. To make it more interesting we engaged the respondents with polls about the articles as well. With newsletters it is also pretty standard to use A/B tests, simply to determine which option (if there´s more) is better or more attractive.

What was really interesting as well was the respondents’ feedback on the photos that were supplementary to the newsletter articles. Respondents had very useful (and maybe surprising) observations. With some of the pictures they felt they did not match the message of the article or were disruptive for the reader.

With the results from the community, we were able to provide our client with recommendations about which article should be included in the newsletter. We could also pass on insights into the pictures and the subject of the email to our client, which turned out to be very valuable. Thanks to long-term testing we are able to identify benchmarks of attractivity of individual articles.

Know the potential of the contents: let respondents read through different options and topics that are supposed to be in your newsletter and let them vote for which one they prefer

Get spontaneous suggestions: ask respondents to come up with topics that are interesting for them

Find out the impressions of the newsletter as a whole: test supplementary pictures/photos and e-mail subject with respondents to see whether they match the contents