Email Advice in Your Inbox Volume 43

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What have we found for you in the email world right now, Friend?

Here are a few of our favourite links from across the email world, carefully curated just for you (click the bold text below to access each link):

• Create an effective newsletter marketing strategy (via Email Tooltester)

• Create viral cheat sheets using ChatGPT images (via Savvy Snack)

• Using Warm Growth as an email creator? (via Creator Glue)

• Apple’s at it again with iOS 18 (via Email Marketing Rules)

• Beehiiv launches Podcasts for email senders (via Beehiiv)

• Get Mother’s Day email inspiration here (via Email Love)

(*PS: Some of these are paid or affiliate links. We may earn from these only if you sign up and join any of the stuff we recommend. Keeping you looped!).

It’s been a year since we spoke about this, so today’s Volume is an update on something we know most email senders often forget to do:

Build emails to capture short attention spans.

In a world dominated by quick AI summaries and 10-second TikTok dance videos, most emerging email readers now expect things to be concise.

But concise means different things to different people, so how do you cater for everyone?

Unfortunately, that’s nearly impossible, BUT you can try to cater to how people read and consume content.

And understanding that is the focus of today’s learning.

Begin by making it skimmable

Yes, skimmable is a word (we checked that) 👀

So, how do you prevent your subscribers from skim-reading your emails?

Yeah, you can’t. It’s likely happening as we speak (and you’re probably skimming this too).

Here’s another tough fact to digest as an email sender: It’s said that, on average, only 37 - 200 words of your email campaigns are likely to be read by your email audience.

That’s not much at all.

Let’s drive our point home further: According to an NNG eye-tracking study, the email recipients they tested consume email as follows:

Skimmed the emails- 69% of the readers

Read the majority - 19% of the readers

Read all content - 6% of the readers

Took a glance - 6% of the readers

There's also research that states that the average email attention span is around 13.4 seconds long…

These stats highlight what we already know. There’s so little time to capture audience interest before losing it (their interest, not your sanity, yet).

So, how do you get your message across as quickly and effectively as possible?

This question plagues many email senders because so much time is spent curating content, designing the perfect email, and monitoring email results.

It begins by building skimmable emails, and here’s where to begin doing that.

Left-align your email's copy

Reading relies on a ton of visual cues to make sense of where you're situated on either a screen or a page.

We need an anchor for our eyes as we navigate through content, and a crucial visual cue in email readability is the beginning of a new line in a paragraph.

While the centred text may look good, it makes it difficult to read, especially in left-to-right reading languages.

On that: There's also a rule of thumb that any copy that is longer than two lines must be left-aligned (unless you’re reading in Hebrew or Arabic, which is the opposite).

Make it legible

Most emails in 2025 are being opened on mobile devices, so you want your copy legible on a small screen.

A font size of 14px and bigger for mobile is non-negotiable. You'll also want to check that your line spacing and line height are good for both desktop and mobile email reading.

(We all know you brag about your 16…px font size😏)

Make it easy to understand

There’s the popular Flesch Reading Ease test, which analyses how easily someone can read your text. We often fail this and realise we need to cut the fluff…🙃

Scores range from 0 to 100; the higher your score, the easier your readability.

Aim for a score of 60-70, which is considered plain English easily understood by 13-to-15-year-olds, especially for most marketing copy. (See, those A+ students at school were just showing off.)

Here’s a free tool to try and work on your scores.

Remember this: The further folks need to scroll, the more you’ll have them drop off. Keep the copy short and sweet, and the most important points near the top.

Design matters too!

Visual hierarchy is your focus when it comes to design that needs to cater to quick consumption.

The visual structure of your email needs to lead your readers' eyes well enough for them to take action (or, at least, take notice).

Here are 3 ways to tweak your designs to cater for quick consumption:

1. Contrast colours and text - Read about that here.

2. Use white space - Read about that here.

We’re not advocating for you to create shallow content, but give your message the best chance to land by using solid formatting and design.

Everyone will enjoy your emails more ✌🏻

Our newsletter recommendations of the week

We know the best place to learn about email is in the inbox. Why not spice up your email learning by signing up for these awesome newsletters?

Find newsletters just for you

We’ve been big fans of Refind’s model for a while now. Essentially, you pick your topics of interest and get a newsletter curated with content just for you, sent daily.

They also recommend some fantastic newsletters (here’s a glimpse of a few to join).

Sign up now!

Learn how to make AI work for you

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On a lighter note: Pesky LinkedIn newsletters 🙅🏻‍♀️

We apologise in advance…you may be seeing Daniel Berk’s name A LOT more in coming volumes, especially in this section.

He runs sales at Beehiiv and is also the co-host of the Two Dads in Tech podcast, but his god-tier meme game on LinkedIn is just 🤯

Take this gem below as a prime example.

Seriously, if you’re going to publish a LinkedIn newsletter, why not just publish one using Beehiiv instead?

PS: Here’s another post of his that we rate as one of the best of 2025 so far.