Email Design Consideration - The Preview Pane

Excerpted from ConvUrgency.com's Smart Email Marketing Guide

The preview pane is that portion of your email client that allows you to see what the contents of an email are, without opening it. Surveys have found that nearly 70% of business users use preview pane, the majority of which use the bottom view option.

What that means for you as an email marketer is that you have on average a 600 by 250 pixel viewing area in which to get your message across. This has some serious implications on your design, which I'll sum up here:

• Use text & HTML only, no images. This is crucial landscape, and can't be wasted on blocked images!
• Minimize the use of images throughout content (except perhaps in e-commerce emails), as this will allow your email to be readable if the user is scrolling within the reading pane.
• Do no use skyscraper ads in your content.
• Keep administrative functions out of this area as much as possible.

Excerpted from ConvUrgency.com's Smart Email Marketing Guide