The pre-header is an element that can help improve opens, clicks and responses. It is easy to use and incorporate, but surprisingly, several marketers are not taking advantage. For those who are not familiar with it, this article will explain how the pre-header can be used to improve your email marketing practices.

The Pre-Header Defined

The pre-header is a brief snippet of text that is displayed at the top of an email before your content. It is often the first thing recipients will see when viewing your message, and typically the only thing they see when previewing it through the preview pane. One of the most common uses for this text is requesting subscribers to add you to their address book. However, the pre-header can be used to boost your email marketing practices in several other ways. Below are a few examples:

Encourage Recipients to Open

One way to make good use of the pre-header is to utilize it to encourage recipients to open your message. Most of todays mail clients are designed to block images by default, and require email recipients to manually turn them on to view them. For this reason, subscribers often use the preview pane to determine whether they will enable these images based on the HTML text it displays. This is where the pre-header comes into play. By carefully crafting your text, you can appeal to subscribers using the preview pane and give them a reason to open your message.

Improve Mobile Communications

Technology moves fast and has quickly changed the way consumers conduct routines tasks. These days, it is very common for people to check their email on the go, which is made possible by smart phones and a variety of other mobile devices. Despite all their capabilities, many of these devices are equipped with mail clients that have a difficult time rendering HTML images, and because of this, email recipients often have to scroll through broken code before viewing the main part of the message. A well crafted pre-header helps to combat this problem. Even on a device that has trouble rendering email images, it can make your message more mobile friendly.

Entice Action

Some email marketers use the pre-header to perform the cleanup work. For example, they believe it works best when adding text like “click here to view images”.Others see it as another opportunity for a strong call to action. While text that asks the recipient to turn on their images may not keep them from deleting the message, something like “get 15% off your next purchase”, just might do the trick. By using the pre-header as a call to action, you can entice subscribers to view and react to your message.

Do You Need a Pre-Header?

The pre-header can work wonders at improving to your email marketing efforts. Before you put it to work, though, it is advisable to figure out if you actually need one. For instance, your promotional message may already have a compelling call to action link at the very top that fits perfectly in the preview pane. If this is the case, you are probably good to go. On the other hand, if your images are blocked and your call to action gets lost in the mix, an actionable pre-header is definitely justifiable. In a few minutes, you can add a short snippet of simple text that is just noticeable enough to make a huge impact.

Gary San is a best practices activist and advocate for a leading Web and permission-based bulk email marketing service.