Looking for More Email Opens?

Email marketing is the most popular method to advertise in the B2B world — easy, cost-effective, and used by thousands of businesses. But what if no one is looking at your emails? To get the most out of email marketing, you have to make sure people engage.

Look at your inbox right now — how many unread emails do you have? We get a ton of emails every day, so the critical thing for an email marketer is to make your email stand out and get attention.

What is the first impression of your email?

The From Name (who sends it) and the Subject Line (what it's about). But there's one more thing subscribers notice at first glance: a short description of your email — the "Snippet Text" or "Preview Text".

So to improve open rates, optimize all three. Remember this equation: From Name + Subject Line + Snippet Text = High Open Rate.

Does snippet text really improve open rates?

Open rates depend on the impression at first glance. With an interesting subject line and snippet text, you'll undoubtedly improve open rates — I've seen people lift opens by 20–30% just from good snippet text. Include snippet text in your A/B testing too.

How can I customize email snippet text?

Snippet text is the very first text that appears in your email — a paragraph or the alt text of the first image. You can leverage three common approaches:

1. Text Placeholder: place the text you want shown at the top of your email (often used as a preheader / call to action).
2. Alt attribute text: put a transparent 1×1 image at the top and use its alt text as the snippet (define its height/width so blocked images don't expand).
3. Hidden text: put the snippet text in the preheader within a span, set font-size to ~1px and the font color to match the background to make it "invisible."

Quick tip for Marketo users

You don't have to do anything complex — just go to email settings and add a Preheader.