# Article summaries cut from a weekly newsletter: higher clickthrough

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Email (Lead-gen)
- Elements: Copy length
- Date shared: 2015-11
- Test run by: [MarketingSherpa](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/marketingsherpa/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://marketingexperiments.com/a-b-testing/the-importance-of-testing-how-one-test-applied-to-two-email-sends-resulted-in-different-audience-responses
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/marketingsherpa-shorter-newsletter/

Cutting 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.

## Result

**higher clickthrough**

- 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.

## 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)

- 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.

## How to run this test

- 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
- Guardrail: Unsubscribe rate
- Guardrail: Spam complaints
- Guardrail: 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.

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Credit: MarketingSherpa ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/marketingsherpa-shorter-newsletter/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.