What is a title or a preheader?
Title is a small text (from the email’s content) that you can see right after the subject of an email, in the email list in your inbox (especially on mobile phones, new versions of Outlook, Gmail and so on). You can imagine it as a second subject of an email. You can therefore use the same strategies that you would use to write the email subject.
The title is used to show what the email is about and ask the recipient to open it. Add useful or concrete information about the contents of your email. The title is the right place to experiment with humour, symbols or different tactics that aren’t very appropriate for the email subject.
Why it is important to use a title
Together with an address (a name) of the sender and the subject of an email, a title is the first thing that the recipient of your email notices and based on what they see they decide if they are going to open the email. Via an appropriate combination of a subject and a title you can increase the overall opening rate of your email campaigns and make it so more recipients read your email.
How to achieve this
- The title should be short and simple because of the way it is displayed in some email clients. For this reason, there is a limit of maximum 50 characters in Quanda.
- Summarise the content of the whole email briefly and specify what your statement is about. If your subject is about a spring sale, the title can specify what products are included in the offer.
- The title can add to and extend your subject. Whatever is started in the subject can be completed in the title because they are usually displayed either next to each other or below each other.
- Include a call to action or a secondary call to action in the title. If the email already includes one lower in the text, the first call to action can be in the title. It can a be phrase like ‘‘read more‘‘, ‘‘click here‘‘, or ‘‘find out more".
- You can include a funny or witty text based on what your content is about.
- Beware of repetition. It is tempting to use the subject or the main headline of the email but you can try being more creative. Use the space for encouraging recipients to open your email. Do not forget about the A/B testing and improve your title.
- Use personalization in the title. If personalization worked for you in other parts of the email, you could also use it in the title.
- You can mention an interesting link or an article in your title that is mentioned later in the text and encourage the reader to find the link or the article in the email.
- Just like in other parts of the email, the title shouldn’t be formulated so it forces the reader to open it by using some tricks. The name and address of the sender, the subject and title of the email should work together so that the recipient will know what they can expect when they open your email.
Karolína Horáková
Quanda