An email's preview text is displayed in the inbox after the subject line of an email and is usually pulled from the first line of text within the body of the email. Like an email's subject line, its preview text can mean the difference between a recipient opening or deleting your email.
Fortunately, Privy enables you to edit and customize your preview text in a couple of ways.
Best Practices
There are two main ways you should use preview text to increase the effectiveness of your emails:
- Use the preview text to summarize the email.
- Use the preview text to complement your subject line.
If you do not specifically add preview text to an email, inboxes will automatically pull it from the first line of text within an email -- this means that a confusing combination of the ALT text of your logo, your navigation bar options, or various other elements could be pulled in as the preview text instead.
When creating your preview text, it's also important to be as concise as possible. The device, email client, and settings of your recipients directly affect the preview text they see. A recipient could see anywhere from multiple lines of preview text to 0 lines of preview text, but most will see an amount somewhere in between. With this in mind, try to keep your preview text between 35 to 55 characters, especially as most emails are now opened on smaller mobile screens.
Add preview text to an email
To add preview text to an email, enter it into the Preview Text (Optional) field in the Sender Info section of the email editor and Save.
This approach is quick and easy. However, it should be noted that many email clients will continue to pull in information from the email's body if the preview text does not fill the recipient's entire view in their inbox. To prevent this from occurring, consider trying the additional option outlined below.
Add custom coded preview text
To create white space after your desired preview text so that email clients don’t pull other distracting text or characters into the preview, you can use a chain of zero-width non-joiners (‌) and non-breaking spaces ( ). The repetition of “‌ ” fills any remaining preview text space and should look something like this on the recipient's end:
To add this to your email:
- Open the email editor for the desired email and ensure the Preview Text (Optional) field in the Sender Info section is blank. If this isn't cleared, the preview text will repeat.
- Next, add an HTML element to the top of your email from the sidebar.
- Paste the code listed below into the HTML element, making sure to input your desired preview text, and then Save your changes.
<div style="display: none; max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;">
Your preview text here.
</div>
<!-- Insert ‌ hack after hidden preview text -->
<div style="display: none; max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;">
‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌
</div>
- Use the Send Test Email option to ensure the preview text displays properly. Depending on the length of your preview text, additional zero-width non-joiners may be required.
As a reminder, the recipient should see something like this after these changes:
