Peter's Blog

We web designers and developers can easily forget how much of our day to day language is incomprehensible to outsiders who don't know their AJAX from their Jif. Over time, we tend to develop ways of talking to our clients that they can actually understand, which is great.

However, there are other areas where industry specific jargon can creep in without being noticed. One such spot is in our MailBuild templates. Not so much in the technical construction of the templates, which are intended for clients, but more in the labelling used, which is aimed at your client's subscribers.

For example: You know what a web version is, and your client might know, but their readers? Probably not. Instead of using the actual phase web version in your template, why not describe what it actually is. "If you can't read this email, view it on the web".

There are other spots you might want to work on. Do email readers understand what "unsubscribing" actually means? Could you be clearer perhaps: "If you are no longer interested in these emails, unsubscribe now and you will not get any more."

Once you've sorted out your templates, you can work on your language when explaining things to your client. Do they know what an open rate actually is? Have you helped them understand what bounces are? These are useful terms that can be easily glossed over.

You may already do this of course, which is great! Now all you need to worry about is your clients using their own jargon that the readers don't understand!