What is an email preheader?
An email preheader is a line of text—typically a single short sentence—that comes immediately after an email’s subject line.
If you want a more in-depth understanding of this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: What is the purpose of this?
The main purpose of an email preheader, just like an email’s subject line, is to give the recipient an idea of what a particular email is all about before they even open it.
But if it does the exact same thing as the subject line, what is the point of including it?
Well, you can think of it as a means to expound on your subject lines. Keep in mind that there is a limit to how long an email’s subject line can be—that and you need to write them in a certain way for them to be effective. Email preheaders give you extra space to convince your target recipients to open your emails.
Of course, for this to work, you will need to write your email preheaders in a way that gives your recipients a compelling reason to actually read your emails—which we will talk about in more detail in the next section:
Question #2: How do I write an effective email preheader?
To write an effective email preheader, you need to do three things:
- Make it about the recipient
- Offer a concrete benefit
- Keep it simple
Let us take a closer look at each one:
First, to boost the effectiveness of your email preheaders, you will need to shift the focus from you, your products, and your services to your target recipients and their needs.
This means that instead of saying something like:
- We have updated ABC app!
- We have improved our ordering process!
- We have updated our privacy policy.
You can say:
- You can now do more with ABC app!
- Ordering is now easier than ever!
- Enjoy better control over your privacy!
Second, in addition to focusing on the recipient, you should also offer a concrete benefit whenever possible. It can be anything from discount codes and exclusive offers to something simple such as a free report or consultation.
Finally, to make your email preheaders more effective, you need to keep them as simple as possible. Keep in mind that there is a big chance that your recipients are busy, so if your email preheader—and the rest of your email— requires a lot of work to digest, they will most likely just ignore it.
Question #3: How long should an email preheader be?
As a general rule, you should keep your email preheader between 40 and 130 characters long to make sure that it will show up in its entirety on both desktop and mobile devices.
This, however, does not mean that you should never go over 130 characters. There are situations where there is just no way to say what you have to say without using more characters. But if you really have to go over the character limit, you need to make sure that the first few words of your email preheader are still enough to provide the recipient with a clear idea of what the rest of the email is about compelling reason to open it.
At the end of the day, the main purpose of an email preheader is to get the recipient to read the rest of the email. As long as it accomplishes that goal, then it does not really matter whether or not it shows up completely or gets cut off.
Question #4: How do I add it?
If you are using an email marketing platform such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, or Sendinblue, it does not really take much to add an email preheader to your marketing emails and email newsletters. Their premade email templates already have a provision for one. All you really have to do is type it in.