Reader eXperience (RX) or How to become a true designer and an architect of your emails
RX is an experience/impression a reader gets from an interaction with your text/email/message. And your main task, as the author, RX designer of your text, is to make this impression maximum positive.
In design, we talk about UX (User eXperience). Likewise, in emailing, we can start talking about RX (Reader eXperience).
UX is an impression the users get from an interaction with the interface. It tends to focus on whether users can reach their goals and how difficult/easy to do that. RX is the same. It’s the experience/impression the reader gets from interaction with the text/email/message.
When I use the word ‘experience’, I mean all the aspects of the interaction between your email and the text consumer. Is it readable? Is the text understandable from the first reading or loaded with long formal phrases? What overall impression does it create? What feelings does the wording evoke? What tone of voice does the message have? How does it sound, and how is it perceived?
Also, it’s necessary to pay attention to formatting — paragraphs, bullets, underlinings, quotation —every single symbol matters when you are composing an email, and everything should work in concert.
Take responsibility for the experience your email creates
Of course, your reader is unlikely to focus on every single nuance and think, “hmm… this is not quite readable, this part is illogical, and here the comma is missing, oh… here’s, as well”. For sure, no. But anyway, the impression will be created and not the best one. So, as the author of the email, your main job is to make the impression maximum positive. Indeed, you can’t get into your readers’ heads and force them to think the way you want. But to take responsibility for the experience your email creates, refocus, concentrating on your readers’ needs and goals, and make every possible effort to deliver the best RX is certainly feasible.
One of the main challenges for a UX designer is to ensure that the product has an intuitive interface for the user, that it is crystal clear where to click and what happens after that click. So is your task, as the RX designer of your emails, to make sure your text is compelling, cohesive and consistent, logically introduce information, so that your reader can seamlessly move from one thought to another, from one piece of information to another. Like UX designers, develop a scenario of the end-to-end interaction of your reader with your text and stick to it.
Keep the reader-focus
Typical UX-design process includes creating a user persona, building a prototype, doing A/B testing, adapting and learning along the way. And that’s how you, as an RX-designer, should approach work on your emails, constantly keeping the reader focus. That is, understand who you are emailing to, how to approach this person, how to introduce information, test your word choice and style, monitor their reaction (Have they done what you’ve asked? How fast and correct?). Adapt and learn, making conclusions for the future.
Be like a UX designer!
It is interesting that in the case of UX bugs, designers perceive them naturally, as a part of a learning curve and a chance to improve the user experience. But in the case of emails, authors boil over and resent when their readers (text users) ask to repeat something or to clarify, or ask additional questions, or complain that the text is absolutely unclear. Such readers are just claimed to be dull, and no action is taken to improve the text and personal writing style.
Why not start to perceive yourselves as a true RX designer and not try to excel in this new profession? Why not take 100% of the responsibility for all your scribbles and their readability for the audience? Why not refine and fine-tune the text, making conclusions for the future after receiving feedback? So, the best advice I can give — be like a UX designer!
One of the key features that all great UX designers possess is their interest in people, desire to study them, attempt to understand their needs and motives and satisfy them. A pretty good feature for email authors, isn’t it? A great RX is all about focusing on readers, their needs, and respect for those needs reflected in the text.
A hardcore UX aims to improve and simplify users’ life. Similarly, a hardcore email makes things easy and saves effort. Such email is always easy to read and even easier to reply to.
Just think, dumb, and ill-designed applications and solutions drive everybody crazy (user-experience wise). Some tiny unconsidered elements in the car interior or a wrong-placed button can spoil user experience and development effort. And do you think your shapeless, ill-thought-out emails don’t freak people out? The same story as with the rest that is botchery.
One of the main trends in UX design is simplicity. Clean, intuitive interfaces, clear CTAs. It resembles the KISS approach in emails. If the interface is simple and clear, then the desired outcomes are easier to achieve with less effort. Similarly are the emails; if they are easy-to-understand, comprehensible and shapely, then both you and your readers can achieve the desired outcomes faster and simpler. Highlight the key points correctly, introduce the information logically, minimize the probability of mistakes and miscommunication.
Give it a thought about how to motivate your reader to act without being lost on the way.
Information architecture
In many cases, the content and functionality of digital products are structured and easy to use. However, it doesn’t occur unintentionally. It’s due to IA (information architecture). Information architecture is a science and practice of arranging parts to be understandable and easy to use. It is often an unseen effort but expected to be an inseparable part of all digital products, thoughts and ideas. It is often said that IA is a “tool for making sense of the mess.” And it is something that every emailer should take home to turn the mess of thought and wordings into the text that makes sense for the readers.
As you may see, UX is more than just a beautiful interface and cute animation. This short acronym comprises the whole big notion that always requires seeing the bird-eye view of the way of the user from the entry to the exit point.
Making sense of the mess
And properly selected words is just a tiny part of RX because emails writing is a complex process, and a good email consists of many aspects which have to work in concert. RX is always a system. It won’t work if you just spot and eliminate phrases like Stupid Email Introductions and shorten the text with KISS Principle. You have to change your whole approach to emailing. You have to build a whole new strategy and understand that this email is part of the bigger picture of the communication with a certain user, and your email has to fit into it. How does it contribute to developing your email brand? What goals does it have to achieve? There are some parallels even with Design Thinking, don’t you think?! But let's leave it for a while…
Meanwhile, let’s become RX designers of our emails and architects of the great experience communicating with us.
