A Tale of Two Preview Panes

Two email campaigns from big-time media companies. One gets it, the other doesn’t.

If you’re embarking on an email campaign, it’s important to consider the effect of the Preview Pane.

Consider two emails we received today: one was from the NY Times, the other was from Ad Age. One email was designed to take advantage of the Preview Pane. The other failed miserably.

Before we reveal the results (it’s pretty obvious), let’s explain:

The Preview Pane gives you a chance to see a little bit of an email from your Inbox view so you can decide whether or not you want to open the message.

Lots of email programs (email clients, in technical parlance) have this capability.

The Problem

Many email clients also sport a feature which blocks incoming images unless you click “get entire message,” “download pictures,” or some such verbiage.

Solution

1. To make proper use of the Preview Pane, your emails should put the important words and links in plain text - not image text.
2. You should compose your email so the most important info is displayed toward the top left (the area most likely seen in the Preview Pane).

And the Winner is

Decide for yourself:

Bottom Line

Effective use of the Preview Pane lifts open rates. Ad Age does itself a disservice by ignoring this aspect of email marketing.