Best Practice Tips For Preheaders
If you want to write the best email preheader text, there are a few best practices to follow. It's worth taking the time to come up with a suitable preheader for each email campaign. The good news is, they are pretty straightforward to construct.
1. Make It Personal
Personalised emails are proven to give greater response rates and an improved user experience. Personalising your preheader is a great way to catch a reader's eye. When your email arrives it's likely to be jostling for attention in their inbox. Including your recipient's name in the preheader immediately gives your email more credibility. It's less likely to be dismissed as a generic marketing email or spam.
The ability to personalise emails is an important factor for TaxAssist Accountants who have been using the Smart Messenger email marketing system for many years. Find out more about how they benefit from this feature in our TaxAssist Email Marketing Case Study.
It's easy to personalise your preheader using email marketing software like Smart Messenger. You do this by inserting contact data merge tags in your preheader where you want the data to appear. For example, you might want to start your preheader like this:
Hi {?$contacts_first_name?}
With this example, the merge tag will display the data from the corresponding field in your contact list - in this case, the first name.
Personalisation is a powerful tool in your email marketing kit. It helps you develop stronger relationships that could drive future business. For this reason, it's a good idea to review how you capture data and the type of data you collect. If you use sign-up forms, include boxes for the person's name as well as their email address. Likewise, if you collect data in other ways, ensure you record your contacts' names in your spreadsheet or CRM system. In this way, you will be able to connect better with your readers via future email campaigns. For more ideas, read our article about How to Build an Email List.
When storing or processing personal data, always remember your data protection obligations and handle data with care. At Smart Messenger, we have trained data protection specialists who provide free guidance on this topic to clients. For an informal, no-obligation chat about your needs, call us on 01603 858250.
2. Size Matters
Keeping your preheader to the right length is an important consideration. There are no hard and fast rules for character count but the content should be concise and to the point. But don't make the preheader so short it's meaningless. And don't include so much information that there's no reason to open the email!
In some situations, you may want to make your preheader longer. For example, if you need to summarise some important news or product offering. Or you may want to pose a question to your readers via the preheader. With longer preview text, position the most important content at the start of your copy. That way, it will be visible whether the email arrives on a desktop or mobile device.
If you have a simpler message, a short preheader may be enough to capture your readers' attention.
Use the test feature of your email marketing service to try different ideas for your email preheader. View your test emails on different email platforms including desktop and web email clients, as well as various devices. Check how the preheader displays and adjust it as needed for the most impact.
3. Keep It Simple
Your message will be competing for attention amongst a lot of other emails. For this reason, make sure the preheader is succinct and engaging. This will give your reader more chance of noticing it when scanning their mailbox.
Rambling preheaders that disappear off the edge of the reader's inbox before making their point are likely to miss the mark. Take some time to think through different ideas for your preheader. Use the test function in your email marketing software to see what looks best.
4. Split Testing
If you can't decide between two (or more) great preheader ideas you can try split-testing your campaign. A split test, also known as A/B testing, allows you to send the same campaign to equal portions of your database, but with variations to the email template. To compare the effectiveness of two preheaders, you could send an identical email to different halves of your database. The only change would be that you'd use a different preheader for each. Your email marketing system’s campaign report will tell you which preheader generated the most opens. You can take what you learn and apply this to your next campaign. Split testing is generally only worthwhile if you have a large database to provide a meaningful comparison.
Split testing is easier to set up than you might imagine and at Smart Messenger, all our clients receive free ongoing phone support as part of their plan. This means we are always on hand to explain how to take advantage of the system's features and provide guidance on how to get the most from this functionality.