Article summaries cut from a weekly newsletter: higher clickthrough
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsCutting the article summaries from MarketingSherpa's weekly Best of the Week newsletter led to higher total and unique clickthrough.
MarketingSherpa's copy editor ran the six-week A/B test, and it was published on MarketingExperiments.
Exact figures appear only in images, so the size of the lift isn't stated in the text.
- Total clickthrough trended higher for the shorter version across six weeks of sends.
- Unique clickthrough also trended higher.
- The exact lift isn't given in the text, so we don't show a number.
The change
Article summaries removed; titles and links kept.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
The weekly Best of the Week newsletter listed the most popular articles, each with a full summary.
Variant
The shorter version listed the same articles with the summaries removed.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- A shorter email is quicker to scan, especially on a busy Monday morning.
- Without summaries, readers had to click to learn more, which may have pushed clicks up.
- Weekly readers may already know the brand well and need less context per article.
Caveats: Numbers are only in images, so the size of the lift isn't confirmed. The same change applied to a monthly newsletter did not reliably win.
Who ran it
MarketingSherpa ran this test and published the results (MarketingExperiments). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on MarketingSherpa →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we remove article summaries from our newsletter, then clickthrough will rise because readers can scan it faster and must click to read more.
- Primary metric
- Unique clickthrough rate per send
- Guardrails
- Unsubscribe rate
- Spam complaints
- Time on site after the click
- Who should test it
- Lead-gen and B2B publishers that send frequent digest newsletters. It may not work for less frequent sends, where readers value the extra context.
Questions
Do shorter emails get more clicks?
Often, but not always. The same publisher saw no reliable gain when it shortened its monthly newsletter.
How long should I run a newsletter test?
Run it over several sends. A single send can be swayed by that week's topics.
MarketingExperiments