They say, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression. I don't know exactly who " they" are, but in this case, I agree with them. In an email, your first impression consists of three parts: the sender or sender's name, the subject line, and the preview text. Everyone remembers the name and subject line because your email service provider (ESP) won't allow you to send an email without them. But preview text is a completely different situation. And if you forget that, you leave that part of your first impression up to the whims of your subscriber's email client. In this article, we'll explain how to take control of your preview text to ensure that the first impression of your email is flawless.
What is preview text? Preview text is the piece of text below or next to the subject line of an email in the inbox and provides additional insight into the content of the email. Gmail calls it snippets, Apple Mail calls it a preview, and Outlook calls it a message preview. Whatever it is called, this copy is the preview text. Here is an example of preview text: preview_text Preview E-Commerce Photo Editing Service text in Gmail Preview text is well supported in all email clients these days (at least the US based ones). With most email clients supporting it and displaying it by default, it's a great way to connect with your subscribers and support your subject line. But, how email clients extract this content differs and depends on the email client itself and the subscriber's inbox settings. Most email clients will pull preview text from the first lines of copy in your email, but some will pull it from image ALT text or, in rare cases, code such as tags.
However, the mined code is not as common as it used to be. diff_preview_text Examples of text preview rendering differently in different inboxes The text preview is a great opportunity to help support the subject line and connect with your followers. By letting the email client decide what to show in the inbox, you're doing your brand and your subscribers a disservice. Especially since up to 24% of respondents look at the preview text first when deciding to open an email. Don't believe us? Do text preview tests yourself. Topicality saw its open rates increase by almost 8% when it started using preview text. And Wedding Wire saw a 30% increase in click-through rates when testing theirs.