Ok I’m sure we all know about the preview pane - specifically the horizontal one that displays the top 200-500 pixels of your email before someone actually opens it.

Well if you’ve stopped worrying about optimizing your emails for preview pane - perhaps because Outlook 2003 defaults to the vertical now (not as much of an issue) or because a lot of mail clients don’t use preview panes - than I’d say it’s time to start worrying again!

Yahoo! Mail has just released a beta version with a quite small preview pane. MSN Live Beta version has it.. and I have a funny feeling it’s going to become pretty standard. Even our ISP’s new webmail has it!

So in light of this, I want to take a few minutes to review some important considerations for preview panes:

1. Consider what you put “Above the fold” - While it probably looks really lovely to start your newsletter off with a nice big image - with preview panes, it can be a big waste of prime real estate.
2. Limit your “housekeeping” text - It’s always great to add a “view this in a web browser”, “add me@email.com to your address book”, “See a french version” (for fellow Canadians) or your standard permission reminder. However, having too much of this will clog up your preview pane view and result in fewer opens. If you send a regular newsletter, maybe keep one or two lines, and revolve what text you use with each issue.
3. Think desirability - Like the From name and subject line, what displays in the preview pane will aid in the decision to open the email. So put some juicy tidbits from your newsletter in pane view to entice the undecided to open.

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