The Preview Pane from your Customers’ POV
Posted by Drew Miller on August 27th, 2009
The importance of optimizing your email marketing messages for preview pane viewing cannot be understated. Once you’ve gotten someone to click on your message with a winning subject line, the next step would be to make sure that you capture their attention in the preview pane viewing area.
It’s important to keep in mind the varying sizes of monitors, screen resolutions and the actual preview pane itself. Taking a worst-case-scenario approach, here is a view of my inbox in Yahoo! on my 17” laptop:
Again, this is my size preference so others may vary, but I personally try to keep about half of my inbox viewable and the other half for preview pane viewing. Here is a look at a few messages once I click on them:
Sears:
Jet Blue:
Amazon:
Out of these three selections, Amazon does a really nice job of optimizing the preview pane with several links and reiterates the subject line promoting Blu-ray Movies. By having multiple touchpoints in the preview pane area, they have greatly increased their chances of getting someone to click.
For more great information on preview pane optimization, check out these other blog posts:
Email Marketing Minute – Power of the Preview Pane
Are Your Subscribers Organized? Why It’s Better to Assume the Worst
