We’ve written about the importance of “pre-header” text in your email campaigns before. This is the text that immediately comes after your subject line. Before mobile was SO prevalent in accessing information, we all used to include “having trouble viewing this in a browser?” as our pre-header text linking them to a hosted version. Now, this is still important to have since some mobile devices do have issues with HTML. However, you can use this valuable space to put some really important information.

So I decided to do some digging around my own mobile device to see what some businesses are up to, what they’re doing well and what they could be doing better, but not even realize it.

One of the BEST restaurants in Napa in my opinion. They change their menu daily. In my opinion they could change their subject line to “Ad Hoc Daily Dinner” and include the main entree in the subject line. But check out their pre-header, great use of the phone number. They also manage to get a little bit of the menu in the pre-header, this is pulling from the first part of their email which is the menu. Maybe they should change up the menu and put the entree first and see if they get a better response?

Po Bronson, a great writer, sends out a text-only email. This is why the pre-header is just filled with the first part of his email and it pulled me right in! I’m not advocating we all run out and do text-only emails, but this works for Po.

Gilt Groupe has done a wonderful job with their daily sales. They also do a really good job with subject lines as well. They try to cram every brand name they can and something tells me they lead with the best-sellers. They almost had a perfect pre-header in my opinion when they had “Invite Friends” almost in the pre-header. If you invite friends and they order you get a $25 credit. So simply including “Click here to view” could replace “If you are unable to see this message, click here to view.” and save them more space allowing them to include “Invite Friends and get $25”.

And finally, we all love a good Groupon. This particular email is reminding me to go and use my Groupons which was great since I never remember to check out the ones I’ve purchased and their expiration dates. But what I found interesting about this pre-header text is that they are putting the Unsubscribe link at the top! I don’t know that I would put it in the pre-header text. Most people are conditioned to look for it at the bottom.

*BONUS – I learned how to take screenshots of my iPhone. Simply hold down the bottom button on the screen you want and quickly click on the top button. Voila!

There you have it. I’d love to hear your successes with using pre-header text.

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