Why custom 'Preview text' is important
Preview text is displayed alongside the subject line of your email in the inbox of mailing apps like Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail.
How to add 'Preview text'
Adding preview text to your email gives you the ability to customise what your recipients read when they first interact with your email. This means it can be very effective at igniting their interest in what you have to tell them and encourage them to read on.
Steps
- Open your mailing campaign edit screen (Marketing > Email/Marketing campaigns > Compose/Edit emails).
- Click the pencil edit icon in the very top-right corner of the screen.
- Add your 'Preview text' and click save.
Note: If you have made this change after having begun to build your mailing campaign ( i.e. when choosing recipients, adding a subject line, sending test emails etc), you will need to press 'Refresh content' in the 'Email source' tab of your mailing campaign edit screen to make sure the update is included in your final mailing. Read more about this here: Send a mailing campaign.
Leaving 'Preview text' empty
It is not essential to use the 'Preview text' field. If no text is entered into this field, mailing apps will simply display the first part of the email as the preview text.
Strange text in the preview field in sent emails
If the first part of your email contains and image (or in strange but invisible HTML), the text in the email preview, could pull through the html of the image.
Will this affect my campaign's bounce rate?
Leaving your 'Preview text' field empty is unlikely to have a direct effect on your bounce rate, though email clients like gmail and outlook do seem to be very sensitive to these things. We don't know their exact algorithms but understand that they take into consideration everything to do with your mailing (as well as how its recipient interacted with your previous mailings) before bouncing emails.
For further tips on creating and sending your mailing campaigns, view our guides: