Designing eNewsletters For Previewing in Outlook

This is a great article by Loren McDonald “Designing Emails For the Preview Pane and Disabled Images”. It is based on survey findings done to study how email recipients use the preview pane of their Outlook and Lotus Notes.

I went through the article and it's worth reading. If you are time constrained, I extracted the bullet points that I thought were the most relevant to eNewsletter marketing.

- More than 9 of 10 email users have access to a preview pane, and 7 of 10 say they frequently or always use it.

- 75% of email readers who use the preview pane use it in a horizontal format and most often see either 4-5 inches deep of content (44%) or 2 to 3 inches (41%).

- The sender's name and/or address remains the most important factor readers look for in the preview pane when deciding whether to read further or open the email (60%), followed by the subject line (54.3%), the headline (53%) and any teaser copy (30.3%).

- Only 31% of email users say they always or frequently add the B2B newsletters they asked to receive to their safe-senders list or address books in order to avoid losing them in bulk or junk folders.

- Once again, the most valuable real estate in the corporate newsletter format will be the top left section, where the horizontal and vertical preview panes intersect.

Marcos J. Menendez
President
www.loopconsulting.com