Jakob Neilson’s latest Alertbox dubbed “Email Newsletters: Surviving Inbox Congestion” has been posted. I urge you to take a few minutes to read about the conclusions of this research, which studies the way people interact with newsletters and inbox clutter. Here is the good news, the study was originally conducted two years ago, and the new research shows that newsletter usability has gone up even in the challenging information overload cluttered inbox.

“Our main conclusion remains the same: Email newsletters are the best way to maintain customer relationships on the Internet.”

Here is a quick overview of the research conducted:

We conducted our new study using an eyetracker with 42 participants. Using eyetracking technology, we recorded where users looked on websites as they subscribed or unsubscribed to email newsletters. We also recorded how users looked at their inboxes and how they read individual newsletters.

We tested 117 email newsletters, as follows:

• We tested 12 newsletters systematically (using a controlled methodology to ensure that all newsletters were used evenly).
• We tested 40 newsletters in a less controlled manner (users picked newsletters that most interested them from an inbox, and some newsletters were read much more than others).
• We tracked users’ eye movements as they read a total of 65 newsletters from their personal inboxes. By definition, each of these newsletters was read by a single user.

Check out the complete article here.