Unconventional Wisdom: When Not to Offer Links

This may sound like heresy to some e-mail experts. But you should give the reader a break occasionally and not force them to link through to a Web site to read an article.

That’s my opinion after writing and broadcasting thousands of e-mail newsletter editions, and reading even more.

Like many readers, I’m a busy guy with an impatient streak. I hate clicking through to read something that I have, like, 30 seconds to absorb.

It’s even worse when the payoff isn’t there. Many times, I’ve clicked through after reading a brief teaser to find that the copy on the landing page isn’t much longer than the teaser.

And nothing looks worse than a newsletter with only a few one-line article blurbs. It’s as if there’s nothing there.

My team produces Direct magazine, and several e-mail newsletters, including two dailies: Direct Newsline and Direct Listline. There are no editorial links at all on the dailies—the articles appear in toto.

Why do we do it that way? There was no real logic to it when we started in the ‘90s except for some vague idea that it would be more convenient for the reader.

Indeed, as our new media team wastes no opportunity to point out, this practice deprived us of some Web site traffic and the ability to analyze metrics. But readers liked it, and the result was that the dailies became hot readership and advertising vehicles with very good open rates. And they are to this day.

Conventional wisdom is that e-zines and Web sites should work together as part of a seamless whole. But backward people like me don’t want to be active in all possible media at all times.

For some types of information, I prefer a text newsletter with no links at all. That’s a channel preference, and it should be honored like any other.

And even with newsletters that link to every article, there may be exceptions based on aesthetic reasons—for example, as we’ve suggested, when you’ve got only a couple of short pieces.

Clicking through may seem a small price to pay for free content, but not every reader will do it. Copywriter Robert W. Bly, who wrote an excellent piece on how to do a B-to-B newsletter in our last issue, advises against having “just a headline and a one-line description of the article, with a link to the full text of the article. All this clicking forces your subscribers to do a lot of work to read your articles, and that’s not what they want.”

Now there’s an unusual point of view.