Increase your chances of getting your messages opened with “Trust Earning Text"

Increase your chances of getting your messages opened
with “Trust Earning Text"

The first line says it all

Why are pre-headers becoming a must for email marketers?

Now that all images are blocked in inboxes (unless the sender email address has been specifically marked as safe) it can be difficult for a recipient to read the email without going through the motions of loading the images, especially with certain mail clients such as Microsoft's Outlook 2007 which do not render the images alternative text either.

Plot your Trust Earning Text wisely

"What we call "Trust Earning Text" is a few lines of text, often in a smaller font-size than the main content, above the logo banner at the very top of the email content. It should not be affected by any image blocking and is your chance to motivate your recievership to either allow the blocked content or click an external view link.

Other messages like ’Add To Safe Sender List‘ will appropriately find their place in the pre-header space. Any good ESP* will give you a link to use in your emails to let the recipient see your html email in their browser and still have tracking.

Trust earning text also doubles up as the 'Snippet' content.

Increased competition for email recipients’ attention pushed email providers and email software vendors to adapt mailers. Gmail, Yahoo and certain view settings in Outlook, now display the first line or two of content from the html version of your email in the inbox with the subject-line known as a snippet.

Using snippets, you can give your recipients a better idea of what your email is about and hopefully increase your chances that it will get opened. It is also popular to add personalization here as well as or instead of in the subject line.

Safe Senders Lists

Most iInternet service providers and inbox hosts view email marketing as permission based emailing. With mailers’ option Safe Senders List it is easy for email recipients to identify your company as a trust worthy sender address.

Once added to the recipient's address book and/or safe senders list, the email will not go through as many spam checks and stand a much better chance of getting in the inbox.

Words: Andy Thorpe, pure360

*PureResponse External View Link is a custom hyperlink destination which will duplicate the traceable html in the email and open it as a web-page in the browser, thus giving the same tracking in the browser as the inbox. This is also useful for the plain text version as plain text-only recipients will be able see your email in its full glory, providing an opportunity for bookmarking and repeat clicks.