Make eMail Creative by Including a Preview Pane

When you start an email marketing campaign, capturing the attention of your customers is the primary goal. That means making your email creative in some way. A preview pane is a very easy method to do just that.

Understand the Basics of a Preview Pane

The preview or reading pane is a common feature on most email systems, such as Outlook and Yahoo! Mail. It allows viewers to preview messages in their inbox without opening them. This enables them to view messages safely without the possibility of activating or opening malicious scripts or attachments.

The benefit to your marketing campaign is you allow your recipients to glimpse your message before they open it. If it looks like spam, they delete it immediately. If it appears to be from someone familiar – like a reputable brand – they open it.

Therefore, the subject and look of your email message are critical to catching the eye and attention of your recipients. Things you don’t want readers to see until the end – unsubscribe, disclaimers, and such – should be left until the end.

Building a Good Preview Pane

As this MarketingSherpa blog suggests:

The preview pane is your prime real estate to pull people into your email. In conjunction with the sender address and subject line, it’s the key to getting people to read your email.

 The blog goes on to note these statistics:

• 33% of email recipients have images turned on by default
• Over 80% of business people and over 50% of consumers use the preview pane
• Over 75% use a horizontal preview pane, rather than a vertical one

That means that building a good preview pane is important to engaging your subscribers. Otherwise, they will simply ignore or delete your message.

To accommodate both horizontal and vertical panes, consider:

• Where you place your logo and company name
• Putting a teaser near the top of your email
• How to hook your readers with copy
• Using a table of contents
• Previewing your call to action

Recipients don’t always have the time to review everything in your email. So you need to grab their attention immediately. Making email creative <http://www.goldlasso.com>  by including a preview pane and readers are more likely to hold onto your email until a more convenient time.

If you need help making the best use of your reading pane, we can show you how. Click here to contact us.