Tips To Stop Your Emails Being Deleted In The Preview Pane

Get your email stuck up on a board and not deleted before being read.

Get your email stuck up on a board and not deleted before being read.

Emails are a very effective way to get your brand message across to your prospects. Customers like to receive promotional content via their email address as it is a relatively un-intrusive form of communication. However, the scary thing is that unless you are great at designing emails, 80% of your messages will be viewed and actioned in a preview pane.

As the trend of opening emails on phones becomes more mainstream, the challenges of getting people to see the whole of your message will increase.

It is All About The Details

Research by Lyris found some useful information on how prospects read and action emails. According to their survey results:

  • 60% believe that the sender’s name and email address is the key information.
  • The subject line is the second most essential piece of information for 54.3%.
  • The main headline is the next piece of vital information (53%).
  • Teaser copy is not very important. Only 30.3% of respondents stated they examined the email in the preview pane before taking action.

This information can be very useful in deciding how to design and send your emails. So what tips can we provide to optimise your email campaign designs to get more opens?

1. The ‘From’ Field

Spam is the biggest challenge for email users. Our addresses are bought and sold to companies without our consent and sometimes we can receive dozens or hundreds of unwanted messages a day from companies offering us products we don’t want.

Therefore, being seen as not spam can be very challenging. One way to do this is to ensure your ‘from’ field is not that of an organisation but a recognisable individual to help beat spam filters and make your message look genuine to the subscriber.

2. The Subject Line

The subject line should be working hard on the message you want to provide. Forget the boring and generic subject lines like “RE: Your winter wardrobe needs” or “March Newsletter”. Instead, look for something that provides a benefit to the reader of your email. It could include the action you want them to take after reading your email.

Key action-inducing messages will increase the open and action rates of your emails, giving you a greater ROI.

Don’t be afraid to personalise your emails. Have their name within the subject line and perhaps in the copy of the email, which will make it appear as though the email was created just for them and therefore, more worthwhile for the subscriber to read.

3. Take advantage Of Your Space

Don’t waste the top of your email with text that is only stating the obvious. There is no value in ‘view this email in a browser’, place this at the bottom of the email instead. The top space should be for highly engaging and informative teaser text. Let the reader know what your email is about and what it will give them but keep some information back so they are intrigued about the rest of the content.

Alternatively, you could use this space to offer reassurance that the email is not spam and worth a good read.

4. Don’t Be Obsessed With Images

If you are selling business services, forget the images. Many business email users have firewalls and email client settings that restrict the download of pictures. Therefore, when they see your email in the preview screen, it can look messy and unattractive. If they don’t like the look of your email in the preview screen, they aren’t going to download those images.

Conclusion

Your emails are the key to selling online. They have the greatest ROI of any online marketing channel and can support your business’ revenue continuously. Just ensure you have the right design so that when people preview your emails, they want to open them up and read more.

What are your open rates like? What is your click through rate?

Let us know in the comments below.

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