Today I thought I’d call attention to a cool little creative trick I’ve seen Brooks Brothers do for a while now. As you can see from the image below, they insert a “headline” text link (“Father’s Day Gift Guide – Shop Now”) in the header of each email that summarizes the main offer from the body of the message.

This technique accomplishes a few important things worth highlighting.

First of all, by summarizing the main offer in the form of a text link in the header, Brooks Brothers gets their most important call to action above-the-fold where it is easily found in the preview pane. This is a fundamental issue for any email campaign, regardless of industry or the type of message.

Secondly, the text link in the header is a great way to grab the attention of text-only viewers, many of whom tend to be mobile users. Think about it: if you were Brooks Brothers, a retailer held in high regard by the business set, why not make your email campaigns as Blackberry-friendly as possible? I’d be willing to bet that an above average portion of Brooks Brothers subscribers view their messages on handheld devices due to the nature of their business.

When it comes to email creative, you can never be too attentive to the needs of your customers. Email header testing is a worthwhile investment, and I would recommend testing similar techniques to see what works best with your customers.

A ‘little wonder’ is a seemingly insignificant action or event that eventually has a large impact on your long-term situation. In this two-part series, Jordan Lane looks at some email little wonders — simple ways to improve your email programs — and the key benefits from each of them.

Like diligently saving pocket change, there are some easy additions you can make to your email campaigns that can bring large rewards in the long run. Today we’ll look at two of these tactics that can yield long-term success.

View a hosted version of an email

Providing the opportunity for a subscriber to view an online or hosted version of a message will enable those who might have images blocked or have email rendering issues to be able to view the message. A hosted version, often linked via the text Having trouble viewing this email?, is typically used for HTML and text versions of a mailing.  A great place to put this link is in the top or header of an email.

Subscribers now have one less excuse as to why they should not read the content of an email. If the email can be viewed by the subscriber despite content rendering issues, then the email marketer has overcome a significant technical challenge.

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