Did you know that many email clients display not only the subject line of a new email arrival, but also the first line of text within the email? Take a look at your current email design. What’s the first line of text? Does this first line of text get your message and call-to-action across, or is it just fluff? If it’s not grabbing your reader’s attention, it’s time to add some snippet text!

The first line of text, or “snippet text,” as it’s been coined, has come up recently as a new way to grab your reader’s attention and display the call-to-action of your email. Here’s an example of the snippet text in action: If you use Microsoft Outlook, you have the option to receive pop-up alerts in the bottom righthand corner of your screen when a new email arrives. This pop-up states the email’s Friendly From Name, Subject Line and the first line of text. Gmail uses this same information to display your email details in the list of Inbox emails.

Click on either of the two images for examples of what not to do. These samples show how your email alert appears in Outlook if you only use a View in Browser link at the top of your email, and also how the email description would appear in your Inbox list in Gmail. As you can see, having a relevant and interesting snippet text above any other links or images in your email is very important to grabbing your reader’s attention.

It has become best practice to add snippet text to every email campaign that you send. This will help you get your call-to-action across, even when the recipient quickly scans through the emails in their inbox. This also helps to relay the message of your email when images are blocked, as this snippet text will come through at the top of your email even when images do not.

Here’s another tip: Make your snippet text different from your subject line so that your recipients aren’t simply seeing the exact same message twice. Maximize the message you can get across in this valuable email real estate. And have some fun with it … try testing different snippet texts to grab your reader’s attention and see which one performs best. Give this best practice a try, and let us know your successes by leaving a comment below.

Tags: Best Practice, snippet text

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 9:43 am and is filed under Best Practice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.