All of the elements that make up an email can be made the most of one way or another.  The Subject field, the From field, the layout, the landing pages, the call-to-action buttons, they all benefit of an enormous potential that marketers can use to generate the results they expect.

The preheader is in itself one of these elements of emails, which you can optimise.  This is the link which is located in the upper side of the message, above the actual layout, close to the link that subscribers click to access the online version of the newsletter.

Can you imagine that this area in the upper side of the email can be a factor in the decision that the subscriber makes in connection to the actions in that email?  The answer is “yes”, and that is why the preheader has to be used too.

Why a preheader?

When they get an email, recipients see a link urging them to click on it in order to see an optimised version of that message: “Click here, if you cannot view the message correctly.”  But, there are also cases where people are not attracted into opening an email, for various reasons: the email subject is not persuasive enough or they just don’t feel like reading your message the moment they get it.

In order to catch their eye, you can use the space besides the respective link, meaning the preheader, to make them click on it and read the message.  You can place a link there to make an offer or a special discount stand out against all others.  You got every chance to make them change their minds, read your whole message through, and even click on, then tell a friend or even place an order.

What you should use preheaders for

You can use the preheaders in countless ways, because they can communicate:
• who the sender of the email is;
• what the email is about;
• a call-to-action about an offer, so that it can be highlighted from the very start;
• a call-to-action about how the message or images can be visualized, if there are loading problems that block the email.

What and how you should use in the preheaders

The surprise is that you use the essential elements in the preheader, elements that you should basically use in a newsletter to send your message: the promotion offer or even the slogan of the respective campaign may complement the commonplace “Click here if this email is not displayed correctly”, etc.
Using the promotional offer or a certain discount, you take the recipient from the preheader directly to the shopping cart.

You can use a continuation of the subject, a related offer or a reminder of the offer which is mentioned in the subject field. Let’s take the following subject, for example: “Do you want to see some dream images?”, in order to communicate the offer of a tv set that you want to sell, if you are an appliances retailer, for instance.  On top of the subject field, you can also insert in the preheader something like “You’ve only got a few days more left, if you want to enjoy this offer.  Click here”.

With Gmail, whenever subscribers get an email, they can see the preheaders immediately after they see the email subject; that is why these links should contain a continuation of the message which the subject field announces.

Customise the preheader. Yes, you can.  If you have segmented your database properly, then you have data about every individual subscriber and you can send them whatever they are interested in, and start a dialogue. For example, you can communicate in the subject the spring-summer offer of a fashion catalogue. You can write in the subject field: “Dress as you’ve always dreamt to and pay the lowest price”, and the preheader should be a continuation: “Cristina, you should see the stunning dresses we can offer you”.

Avoid repeating the subject in the preheader. More specifically, if you’ve already communicated your offer in the subject, don’t do it again in preheaders.  You may possibly mention a deadline for the offer.  The message may be redundant; you may turn the recipient off and no longer get the clickthrough rates you want from him/her.

Therefore, if you want your message to work as it should and be coherent, you need to make it consistent with the subject and the remaining content of the newsletter.

Be concise! Use a sentence or a short phrase that can have an impact and make your viewers click on the link that you posed in the preheader.  Two or more phrases will make it more difficult to read through and perhaps your viewer may give up reading your content altogether.  Apart from using more than just one phrase, difficult reading may also be a consequence of improper fonts or colours.  So take care of that too.

Apart from the indefeasible copy or slogan in the preheader, don’t forget that the sentence or phrase in the preheader should be underlined, meaning it should immediately suggest a link.  There are some visuals that have already become a reflex of viewers and that help them recognize things easily.  So, in this case, they will recognize that this is a link they can click on.

We can even speak about positioning the preheaders. Most email clients position them centrally, but – if you want to make them stand out – place them either centrally, in the upper area of the newsletter, or on right-hand side.

Listen to this advice and you can even contribute to the relationship that you have with your subscribers, because from the very first moment when they get the email you will be helping them to make a quick decision and help them find exactly why they are looking for, without wasting time browsing up and down the newsletter.  They will be grateful to you.

Test! We have discussed testing before, when we spoke about email marketing, and we concluded about the beneficial effects testing has.  We said that you test the Subject field, the landing page, the From field, and how you address the viewers.  You can test other preheader versions too.  Before launching a campaign with a preheader, you should just divide your database and send that newsletter using several versions of the preheader.  Besides the text, you can test its positioning too: left, center or right, colours, fonts or font size.  Once you’ve ran the test, you can see how your subscribers react.

Recipients can make a decision within less than 3 minutes from the time when they get the email.  It depends on you to make recipients make the decision you want, and that depends on how you optimise your emails and how you make the most of every component, preheaders included.
Perhaps this is the most common thing in an email and that is why it is ignored in most cases, but you have to be the one who turns the simplest things into genuine selling tools.