I don’t know about you, but I’m personally starting to re-think all my email preheaders.
If you don’t know what a pre-header is, it’s the stuff you jam into the very tippy-top of your email marketing:
Mark Brownlow covers a lot of preheader basics here, and we discuss some design tips for preheaders here and here.
They’re important to have, but for some of my emails, I just don’t think they’re necessary anymore…
For example, the MailChimp Blog has an RSS-to-email list, and I think preheaders are a waste of space in this particular scenario.
I subscribe to a lot of similar “blog to email” lists out there, and frequently check these in gmail (b/c I don’t want them in my “real” inbox), or I check them on my mobile device (so I can read updates while I’m out at lunch and eating alone. Sooooo, so alone).
Recently, I caught a glimpse of one of our messages in Gmail’s inbox preview, and it looked like this:
Gmail is basically grabbing the first line of (machine-readable) content from my message, and displaying that in the preview window.
The problem was that the first line of content was my preheader, which says this:
That preheader text serves a very important function. but it isn’t very enticing in the inbox preview, is it? I normally wouldn’t recommend ditching it for big important campaigns, but my daily RSS-to-email messages are small, useful “tips” and news that people receive so frequently, I think readers would get sick of seeing the “view in your browser” text over and over. By now, they’ve either figured out how to switch to plain-text, or they’ve unsub’d and switched to their RSS reader.
So I removed it entirely, and added our table of contents merge tag above my content slot:
Now, whenever people get my updates in their gmail preview pane, it looks more like this:
On my iPhone, it all looks like this:
Check out the difference between my blog alert, and the Newegg and Old Navy messages. Their preheaders are filled with “utility links” (view in browser, unsubscribe, privacy, etc).
But their subject lines make up for that, and can be changed from campaign to campaign, so it’s all good.
Some messages need good, functional pre-header text and links.
In that iPhone screenshot above, my blog alert and the google keyword alert are daily updates that have the same, functional subject line every time (see why that’s not so bad). So it makes more sense to sacrifice the preheader here to make room for content.
Another option I’m experimenting with is just moving the “View in browser” link down below my TOC.
For example in my latest MailChimp Monkeywrench newsletter, I switched to this format:
Unlike my daily blog alerts, the MonkeyWrench goes out monthly(ish), and is usually filled with a lot more content. Typically 5 or more articles. When there’s that much to read, slight variances in the rendering of my design from program to program can get annoying fast (yeah, I’m talking about you Outlook and Lotus). So I suspect that even people who can view HTML in their email programs just fine might actually prefer to open the email in their browser instead.
That’s why for these newsletters, I’m not going to ditch my email archive link altogether. I’m just moving it below the TOC.
Related:
- eROI has some nice tips on testing preheader content. If you’d like to test different pieces of content in your preheader, try using our automatic A/B testing tool in conjunction with our dynamic content merge tags
GMail’s preview text was exactly why I prefaced my “enable images” alt-text on the Think Vitamin template with a welcome message. In retrospect, providing a dynamic table of contents for that preview text makes a lot more sense. Also, that was a clever “disguise” for your iPhone screenshot.
Yes! You gave me the idea to do that stuff in my reply to Jeff below.
Good thoughts on this. I remember a while ago there was a semi trend for using ‘hidden’ text to serve this purpose, but to also keep the ‘View in Web’ copy. Anthropologie used to do this in all their emails — on a white background it was not viisble, but if you highlighted it, it was there. Thus, in Gmail and other programs that give you a preview of the content, it would also display. Thought it was a nice way to deal with both, however, I’m not sure how that would affect any spam filters as it’s hidden copy.
But back to your point, it’s all about knowing your list and if something isn’t necessary or useful, check it.
Yeah, good point. I’ve actually been tinkering with this. For gmail at least, you can do that “hidden” thing with your alt-text inside of images. So I’ve been toying with a template design where my logo (or some other image at the top of the email) uses my subject line for the alt-text. This can be done with the MC:SUBJECT merge tag. But have also been lobbying for a merge tag that lists your TOC.
Me likes…going to this in my next email campaign.
Using the Mailchimp templates, how can I do this? I’ve noticed the same issue, but your templates won’t let me delete or move the preheader.
Hi Devin, I’m using a MailChimp template myself too. And I think I know what you mean. There’s a bar across the top of most of our built-in templates. We call it the “top bar.” Inside that top bar is your pre-header text. What I did was simply remove the preheader text. The bar stays behind. Since it’s empty, you can’t see it. But before all this, I also made the top bar have the same exact background color as my page background (making it seamless). You might be using one of our templates where the top bar is a different color, and you’re trying to make it “disappear.” We made it a different color to show people that it was a distinct “slot” that could be edited or customized. The bar can’t be removed unless you’re good at HTML coding and can use our HTML email template language to tweak it into your own.
We use merge tags along with our preheader copy (usually a continuation of the subject line) followed by all of the nice housekeeping stuff.
Ex: “Hi *|TITLE:FNAME|*! I thought you might appreciate this issue, it’s all about X. View online or share on *|SHARE:Facebook,LinkedIn,Twitter|*”
As opposed to using personalization in the standard way and in the standard locations, this approach seems to work well for us. It makes the preheader entirely preview friendly.
On a side note: For clients that have image-heavy creatives, we also might use merge tags as part of image alt text to request that a subscriber perform an action, such as downloading the images.
Excellent. Thanks, Ben! I’ll try it out and if I have any questions, I’ll post again.
I have to say that bar with the “view this in your browser text” has irked me on your templates for a long time. I never wanted that text to be the first thing in the previews, but while I could delete the text, I couldn’t delete the box and had to go to extra work to make the email look good without using it for the intended purpose…
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