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Email preheader or preview text is text that comes immediately after the subject line in an email. In this blog, we shall discuss the email preheader and best practices to make it impressive.

An email preheader is basically a text that your recipient views after the subject line in the email that he receives. Knowing the fact that an email subject line is a super cool bunch of the limited characters compels your heads to turn around.

Table of Contents

  1. What is an email preheader?
  2. The fundamentals of an email preheader
  3. Email preheader best practices
    • Make it different than the subject line
    • Announce discount offers in the preheader
    • Summarize email body content in a few characters
    • Provide key details in preheader text
    • Personalize the preview text
    • Add some humor to make it refreshing
    • Add a question in the email preheader text
  4. Use Mumara as the best solution
  5. Conclusion

We also know that the recipients of an email campaign decide their destiny based on the subject line, sometimes ruthlessly. It means that if the subject line is appealing, powerful, and an amalgamation of all the sound ingredients, it will be opened. Otherwise, the trash folder will be the future.

You will surely ask the reason behind this; that is that there are more than half of the population uses email. Moreover, around 333 billion emails are relayed every day. Where these emails are going? Certainly in the inboxes of the users.

So, where there are too many emails in the inbox, the user will open the relevant email only that will appeal to his/her pain points. Convince & Convert research that 33% of the email users choose to open an email or not solely on the subject line basis.

As we know that advancements, innovations, and improvisations are being made every day. Email marketing automation tools like Mumara help users to experience new trends in email marketing. So is the email preheader. It is as important as a subject line to grab the attention of the email recipients.

In this blog, we shall discuss what is an email preheader and how it can boost your open rate. Keep reading!

What Is an Email Preheader?

As we have hinted above, an email preheader is a line of a few words that appear right after the subject line in the email. This well-written line gives an essence of the actual message in the email; likely to appear differently for webmail clients and mobile phones.

Email preheader is also known as email preview text that you can add by using CSS and HTML. If you are an email marketer and send email campaigns to the segmented lists to the users, you must use email software that helps you customize and personalize your email preheaders without any code.

Email preheader is the modern version of the ‘Johnson Box’ that used to be a technique using direct response to preview the subject of an email. This technique was highly appreciated because it summarized the ideas and more people opened this type of email.

The Fundamentals of an Email Preheader

Let us understand the technical foundation before we dig deep into the email preheader. A perfect message comes up with certain dynamics and it has to be balanced to touch the perfect standards to achieve the predefined goals. The perfect metric for a subject line is 50 characters. The same is the case with the email preheaders.

fundamental is email preheader | Mumara

The Email Service Providers (ESPs) recommend that you need to use 50 to 100 characters in your email preview text. Now, the issue arises that this window of characters cannot satisfy the mobile phone needs which cannot be neglected. It means that if we use the characters between 50 to 100 as email preview text, you will not be able to see them on mobile phones.

So, what you need to do is to do it right that must fit the mobile devices and web users. An ideal length for this matter must range from 30 to 80 characters.

Email Preheader Best Practices

Do we apply any magical formula for the successful email subject line when we send an email campaign? There is no magic as such! All that helps in this matter is to follow some of the helpful techniques and rules to make the magic happen.

By analyzing the success stories, we come to a conclusion and named the best practices that help the senders to send the right information and the receivers to get the right information.

Here are some of the email preheaders best practices-fully loaded with the success pattern and help you a lot in the achievement on merit, read and apply simultaneously:

Make It Different Than a Subject Line

Repetition in poetry can work to give some aesthetic pleasure to your listening, we are afraid that will not work in the business and other fields. Rather, humorously speaking, repetition is good enough to turn the ears off considering the message is just a waste of time.

make preview text different than subject line | Mumara

The reason behind all this preamble, we want to tell you that a subject line is and must be completely different than the email preheaders. If they are all the same, they will not make any good impression on the reader other than wasting time & space in the email.

Not only this, but if you use this practice, it will give an impression to your users that your brand is lazy and chaotic. To harness the great tide, all you need is to play actively on this part. To make it easier, we shall learn it with an example.

We know that the email subject line is the first impression that a user sees and decides to open the email message. The email preheader just comes immediately after the email subject line. If you do not differentiate between the both, it would be disastrous.

What if both are the same? What is the reason to use it if you keep both of them safe? It will be a wrong practice you need to avoid before time.

Announce Discount Offers in the Preheader

Everyone knows that email marketing is used to tell people about the news, discounts, and sales, and inform the users.

Hence, if you are providing a piece of information to the users about a discount, we suggest you not tell it in the email subject line. Rather, you must use email preheader space for that purpose.

announce discount offers in the preheader | Mumara

For example, if you are running a bakery and want to tell your customers about the discount, you can use the following method:

Subject Line: Did You Like a Chocolate Cake?

Preheader: Today Is Chocolate Cake Day- Discount Up to 50% Off

In the above example, we see that this is a perfect way to use the subject line and preheader space.

Additionally, it will tell the users without opening the email about all the stories that they will find in the email. If they will feel interested, they will open the email to hit the call to action (CTA) button and that makes sense.

Summarize the Email Body Content in a Few Characters

Here, you need to follow William Shakespeare. He says, “brevity is the soul of a wit”. This saying is the perfect method to win the market. In the modern era, as we know that everyone has limited free time so you need to make your message quite impressive and short so that the recipients get attracted to it.

If there are too many irrelevant details in your email, the reader will get bored. As we all know about SMS marketing. While using this platform, the companies send a very concise message. This is one of the reasons that the recipients open SMS instantly.

Using a few words or characters in the email preheader will tell exactly the users what is all about. On the other hand, this message will be quite suitable for mobile and web users in the perfect manner.

For example, if you are a blog, you can send craft your email subject line and preheader in the following way:

Subject Line: Read Fresh & Latest

Preheader: Fortnight Newsletter

If we focus on the above subject line and email preheader, we see that there is a great potential to grab the attention of your users.

Along with it, the preheader text “Fortnight Newsletter” says that this email is not about any discount offer; rather it is all about a newsletter.

Provide Key Details in Preheader Text

We are going to tell you about the email preheader text more concisely. Are you ready? Preheader text acts like a subheading that covers the core details. While writing a subject line, you can make it worthy by adding one or more relevant words.

But when we say talk about preheader text; it must give the whole essence of what is going to discuss in the email. If you fail, to discuss the key details, you can lose your users, so beware!

For example, if you are a florist and want to tell your users about the special discount on flowers on Valentine’s Day, do it in the following way:

Subject Line: Valentine’s Day Special Bouquet

Preheader: Save up to 20% on purchasing a special bouquet this Valentine’s Day!

These kinds of juicy details can be used in the email preheader text to tell the user about the key details in the most professional manner.

Personalize the Preview Text

Personalization and customization are the ongoing processes of email marketing strategy. It is now the story of the past when people sent emails in simple form and they got clicked immediately. Not only this, the open rate went from 70% to 90% without making any extra effort.

Now the dynamics have changed. Now email campaigns are sent through email marketing automation tools that allow you to design a personalized and customized email campaign for your users. This technique has transformed the email marketing game and users expect to receive a tailored email in their inbox.

If not, they will assume it receiving through a template, and probably they will ignore it. Hence, personalized email preview text attracts the users like nothing else. If you do this, it will look like the email is so special and made for the user, so he will rush to open it up. Understand this phenomenon through an example.

For instance, if you run a beauty shop and want to promote a new sunblock item, you can do it in the following way:

Subject Line: Need some sunblock for your boating adventure?

Preheader: We have got you covered, John!

This type of email you send is based on the past purchase history of your customer. In the above preheader, John must be your customer who has purchased something from your beauty store in the past.

Now, when you want to tell him about the new product, this is the best way to send him a personalized email to make him feel special.

Add Some Humor to Make It Refreshing

Adding some humor to your email is one of the best techniques to hold the attention of your users. Although it is so difficult to use this technique, if it starts working for you, you can win the game. That is why we suggest you keep it using time to time and test it if it works.

Humor in email preheader | Mumara

You can use Mumara email campaign statistics for this purpose to check the real-time results. By analyzing these results, you can comprehend if the humor is working as per your purpose. To add humor to the email campaign; you need not be a comedian, rather it is all about the way you play with the words.

Your preheader text must appear as a punchline subsequent to the subject line-engaging enough to hold the eyeballs of a reader. Using humor in the email is a way better to increase the curiosity about what has been said in the emails. Sometimes, it works way better than the actual email itself.

Add a Question in the Email Preheader Text

Adding a question is an easy way to increase the curiosity about the message. You can ask the question from the reader ensuring that it is interesting and the users must not know the answer. If you do it playfully, more than half the work be done.

It means that asking the question will bring your user to the email and there you can convince him with your words to take some action. Further, you can start a story in a pitching tone that must be finished in the main email body.

ask question in email preheader | Mumara

For example, if you want to tell a success story of a person named “Dave”, you can do it in the following manner:

Subject Line: Dave increased his sales by 80%

Preheader: Want to know how he did it?

This is the perfect way to hook your users to show some extra interest in your email. And it will increase your open rate to a great extent.

Use Mumara as the Best Solution

Email marketing is at boom and Mumara does not let you remain behind. Rather, it comes up with all the brand-new features that you look for at a quite reasonable price. Mumara comes up with an easy-to-use interface, HTML, and Drag & Drop.

use Mumara email preheader

Along with it, you can prepare a customized and personalized email marketing campaign in a most professional manner. Not only this, as per the significance of the above discussion, you can add email preheader text as the best practice for your email marketing purpose.

Conclusion

To conclude, we can say that email marketing is so powerful due to its use in our day-to-day communications. This is the best way to stand out in the market to handle all the challenges that come your way to success.

Using an email preheader is the best way to make your email marketing strategy more impactful. We suggest you use Mumara and increase your open rate without breaking your bank.

Eric Lee

A reader, writer, researcher, and explorer!

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