As time goes on, businesses are increasingly reliant on online presence. At Spotler, we know how important online communication is to businesses like yours.  We know the basics of what makes a good email, so we wrote some tips. You can check them out here.  But we wanted to go one step further, to see how our brains react to different email layouts and investigate what makes the perfect email. 

How we did it: 

Our aim was to find out what goes on inside our brains when we see certain emails, to understand why some are more effective than others. Using EEG (electroencephalography), we measured participants’ brain activity in response to several email formats.  The emails were presented in 9 different formats and 4 different inbox folders. They included:  ·      Long and short text  ·      Optimised and Default preview header  ·      Static and Gif  ·      Outlook, pyramid, and Zig-Zag  Each format was scored in terms of 6 performance metrics: engagement, excitement, stress, relaxation, interest, and focus. Each performance metric was calculated to provide an overall score for each email format. 

So, which is the best? 

There is one format that stands out as being more engaging, exciting, interesting, and encourages focus; it may not be the one you expect.  In every level of seniority except interns, this format had the highest rating for almost every positive performance metric. With an engagement level of 67% and a focus level of 50.7%, it is a clear winner. To find out which it is and what else attracts our brains, download our full experiment report here.  On the other hand, the contrast between the highest (score of 333.98) and the lowest (317.45) rated format is huge. The worst-rated format is static, which has low scores in excitement, interest, and focus for both male and female participants. Out of directors, managers, executives, and interns, only interns showed interest (63.98%).  Even with a 64% interest rate, only two people free-recalled static in the post-research survey. 

How can we help? 

With our split–testing software, you can easily test which formats you should be using that is tailored to your audience and what their brains love. The software allows you to send two emails with the same content but different designs, subject lines, or sender aliases. From this, you can see which emails your audience engage with most and what makes their perfect email.  To get an in-depth understanding of the full email results and what landing pages performed best, download our one of a kind experiment report here.