Preview panes demand new look at email marketing communications

Pencil in a meeting with your creative department, you will need to update them on new email marketing design considerations.

by Helen Leggatt

Recent months have seen many email clients, including Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft’s Outlook, introduce updates. More often than not these updates enable preview panes which, in turn, will require marketers to re-think the design of email communications.

A consumer who enables preview panes is liable to see only the top portion, or corner, of the emails they receive. Back in January we reported on EmailLabs’ advice to review email templates. New research by MarketingSherpa has produced figures to accompany that advice. Based on a survey of 1,323 adult online consumers, 38 percent are already using preview pane-enabled email clients, and 27 percent of them choose to enable the function. That’s a lot of consumers who aren’t seeing the whole message, and more and more consumers are upgrading each day.

It’s not just the PC-literate 18-34 year olds (84 percent) that are using preview panes, found the study, 68 percent of 35-54 year olds and 58 percent of the older generation are, too.

MarketingSherpa’s report also delves into possible pane sizes, something that is especially important in the overall design of future marketing emails.

In addition, subject lines are going to have to work much, much harder.

Tags: 18-34 age group, 35-54 age group, 55+, email, email marketing, EmailLabs, Gmail, MarketingSherpa, preview pane, Yahoo