Aug 20 2010
Header Design Changes Can Make Big Differences
Header text is a must have best practice for any serious email marketer. This text will display in an email even when images are blocked and formatting is not quite right. This actionable area, at a minimum, should deliver the point of the email and have a link to the online version. Header text should be clear, clean and actionable.
The specialty kitchenware retailer and culinary mecca, Sur La Table, recently updated their email header text. The new text not only follows header text best practices, but it also conserves precious email real-estate, and looks great.
Here is the updated header text. Notice the links are all clickable and are in one line at the top of the email.
Here is the original header text. The text is not all click-able, is a bit long-winded, and takes up valuable, above the fold, vertical real-estate.
What do you think about these updates? Have you updated your header text? Please share your experiences and thoughts with us!
The header of an email is the first thing they see, so is vitally important to get it right. The new header is a definite improvement, I have to wonder if all those links are needed in the header however? It may be better to put a smaller selection of links in, just the most important ones. Or alternatively a link to a page with all the required links. Then in place of that you could add an attractive image, one that your brand will get known by. Just my two cents.