Email Preview Panes Mean Less Must be More

These days, the majority of email users (around 70%) view their email messages via preview panes, making it even more critical that your email subject lines and first couple lines of body text make a statement. Preview panes make checking email more efficient for users, ensuring they can get a snapshot of each message immediately, without having to open each message first. More and more, users are feeling inundated with emails overwhelming their inboxes, so they are more likely to scan each new group of incoming emails at once, and batch delete without opening. So as an email marketer, this means meeting an additional challenge in order to get your emails opened to achieve maximum ROI from your email marketing campaign. It’s essential that your email messages get straight to the point AND create intrigue and interest, which will lead to higher email open and click-through rates!

How, you ask, can I make my emails pop, to ensure maximum email deliverability?

1) Compelling subject lines: Short and snappy subject lines stand out and are easily readable in preview panes. Well-written and relevant subject lines also illustrate the main point of your email message. For even more on headline words that ensure an opened email, see our blog post on subject lines.

2) Keep the content simple: Because people spend, on average, less than 10 seconds scanning their email inbox before batch-deleting those emails that don’t appeal, simplicity (along with compelling) must reign. Shorter headlines can be strong, and the body of the email can contain white space. Scanning emails is a lot of text to process, so helping yours stand out from the crowd with a few well-designed but bold elements will definitely ensure your email “pops” out from the text-heavy rest.  And that means more email opens and increased email deliverability.

3) Clean, uncluttered email: People approach their email with a short attention span. Where people used to read email, now they are scanning, skimming and deleting. Users are becoming more discriminating about whether to open and act on their email messages or just delete after scanning the preview pane. So be sure to be clean in design and to-the-point in your content. Write to the preview pane, and think about what your users will be able to learn from the first three lines they’ll see. For more on clean and simple design, see our recent blog post on how typography can help your email marketing campaign.

That Pane/Pain is a precious piece of on-screen real estate that needs a lot of attention paid to it.  After all, after the From address and the subject line, the Preview Pane is the third most important element you have to get people to open your emails.

And if your emails don’t get opened, you won’t have any conversions, so what’s the point of having a great deliverability rate if your emails don’t make money? 

The Preview Pane is limited in size, it might be horizontal or vertical, it appears differently in different email clients, it might or might not allow images…and you have to pay attention to it. Period.

For more on this topic, download our latest whitepaper on driving ROI after you get into the inbox.

The article is easy to read with plenty of samples to illustrate his points. It’s a little scary too, I confess. Even as a seasoned email marketer, I’m constantly amazed at how different results can be in different email clients! This article illustrates that point really well.

It’s also yet another reminder that the only way to ensure your emails look and act the way you intend them to once you send your email marketing campaign is to test, test and test.

Think of it this way: If you don’t test, you don’t need to worry about your email marketing ROI, because there won’t be any to speak of or point to when it’s time to argue for next year’s budget!

It is a truism that for many companies, the email marketing department is either under-staffed or under-trained. Email marketing therefore tends to be a job that people fall into rather than train for and seek out.

But part of our task as an email marketing service provider is to educate. Hence this blog, and our newly launched email newsletter. And our recent whitepaper.  After the jump, an excerpt from the whitepaper on avoiding tags that invite disaster…

Below is a snippet from the whitepaper, illustrating a critical and often overlooked aspect of email marketing and design: email html is not the same as the html you use for a Web site. If your email marketing design is built as if it’s a Web page, be careful.

For example, there are several tags you want to avoid in your email design because they don’t function in all email clients. Some will even get your email flagged as spam or kept out by an ISP. These tags can affect rendering, but really your first goal is to get your email delivered, so just don’t use them. The risky tags are:

• <Body> elements meaning background color on a page or setting page margins because it’s ripped out in Web clients: the open and close body tags are ripped out
• Page margins “0″
• Background images, whether for the page, a table, a cell; none of these are supported. You can use background colors for tables and cells but not images
• Layers are a fun way to control some functionality as well as layout, but they don’t work in email, so don’t use them
• Rollovers, at mouse state; these don’t work because they’re dictated with JavaScript, which you’re not using in your email, remember?
• Forms <form method=”get || post” action://…….>; if you have a post or even a get form method, it won’t work

For more email marketing and design information, download the whitepaper.

Unless you test.

It’s only by testing that you can continue refining your email marketing campaigns, improving open rates, conversion rates…and ultimately email marketing ROI, right?

The easiest way to test email marketing campaigns is with an A/B split test. An A/B split test means splitting your list into two, then trying two different things with it (like two different subject lines). Whichever one performs better tells you something. Maybe a shorter, more promotional subject line performs better than a longer, dryer one. That tells you your audience might prefer the shorter, more sales-y subject lines, and you can use that knowledge going forward for your next email marketing campaign.

You can test pretty much any email marketing and design component in your email campaigns:

• From names
• Subject lines
• Personalization
• Offers
• Calls to action
• Images
• Delivery days or times
• Click throughs
• Amount of copy
• Type of content
• Html vs. text
• Frequency
• Layout

To do an A/B split test, divide your list into two groups: one is A, one is B. Now change one, just one, thing about the emails between them. (If you have more than one variable, you can’t accurately measure your results.) Then send out your emails to both groups at the same time (to avoid the time variable). Finally, compare your results and learn. That’s all there is to it.

You can either do an A/B test to your entire list (if it’s small), or you can do an A/B to a statistically significant size portion of your list. Your email test group should be at least 10,000 email addresses to be statistically significant.

Wait, there is one more step: Keep on testing. Make it a habit. If you do, you’ll keep on learning, improving, and increasing that email marketing ROI.

To get your email opened, include:

• A From address that is recognizable to the recipient
• A clear, compelling subject line
• As much personalization as is appropriate and possible
• A quick, to-the-point hook

To get your email acted upon, include:

• A professionally crafted description of your offer/message right at the beginning
• A reason to act right away
• A simple and easy way to respond
• 3 to 5 instances of your call-to-action

To follow best practices and please your recipients, include:

• A “view as web page” link
• A straight-forward unsubscribe to opt-out
• A link to a profile center or preferences page

To organically grow your in-house email marketing list, include:

• A FTF/FTC (forward to a friend, forward to a colleague) link

To increase your email marketing ROI even more, do not include:

• Competing links in a campaign email; include only one action

Like I said, this is just a summary, but can at least get you started double-checking your email marketing and design. For more details about these email marketing components, and many others that will help you maximize your email marketing ROI, download the email marketing whitepaper at http://www.clickmailmarketing.com/resources/whitepapers.html.