Everyone gets dozens, if not hundreds, of emails a day, and they don't read most of them. While you can't force your audience to read your emails, there are some things you can do to improve outcomes.

The guide below is just the basics. There are plenty of resources online, so do your research if you want to learn more!

Preview Text and Subject Line

Before you open an email, you'll see three things that help you decide if you're going to read it: 1) the Sender Name 2) the Subject Line and 3) the Preview Text. 

Both the subject line and preview text are consider "prime real estate" because they are your best chance to grab your users attention. Don't skip out on either! 

Subject Line

• Keep it short.
• Be specific and descriptive.
• Include deadlines or other important dates if you have any.
• Include the action you want your user to take
• Avoid special characters. Don't use more than 3 punctuation marks.

Preview Text

What is preview text?

Preview text, also known as "teaser text" or "snippets", is the text you see after the email subject line, before you open your email. When you're receiving a regular email from an individual, the preview text is just the first few words of your email.  In Eloqua, you need to set preview text, because if you do not, it will default to "Trouble viewing this email? View on the web", since that is technically the first sentence of the email.

How do I write preview text?

• Do not repeat your subject line in your preview text. They are already displayed next to each other, so they should provide different information.
• If you aren't sure what to set as your preview text, start with the first "real" sentence of your email (whatever you have written after your greeting in the email body), then edit from there.
• Cut down any unnecessary text, especially from the beginning. Most email clients won't display more than the first 90 characters.
• Ask yourself what's important about your email.  What does your audience need to know most? What might interest them?
• One option is to include an action you want your user to take: 
  • "Join fellow students..."
  • "Learn more about..."
  • "Come check out..."
  • "Let's start improving..."
• Or, if your email is a newsletter, you may want to hint at the exciting content in your email
  • "Tips to make the most of..."
  • "Job postings, new events, and..."
• You can also have your preview text be an extension of your subject line. 
  • If your subject line is a question, your preview text can be the beginning of the answer
  • If your subject line lists out the first topic of your email, your preview text could list the other topics.
• Take a look at your own email inbox for inspiration! What grabs your attention?
• Send test emails to yourself on multiple email platforms, and see how the subject line and preview text is displayed. Do they compliment each other? Are they short enough to not be cut off?

What time of day should I send my email?

There is no perfect time of day to send an email, but it's a good idea to take into account your audience when deciding when to send your email. Think about your audience and their schedule. For example, if you're sending primarily to work emails, an email at the beginning of the day, between 9-11am, or early afternoon, 1-2pm on weekdays is when 9-5 workers check their emails the most. If your audience is mostly students, you may be better off emailing them towards the end of the day, 5-6pm, when they are done with classes.

Ask your users

You can ask for feedback from all your users, but you also probably personally know or work with some of them. Ask what times work best for them!

Test different times

Try sending your email out at different times of day, or different times of the week, then review email analytics and see what worked well. The analytics dashboard on Eloqua tells you what time of day people click, so if most clicks occur several hours after you send your email, you should probably send it at a later time.

Avoid the spam filter

You can't control whether your email enters spam, but there are some best practices you can follow to make it less likely. Many of the guidelines in our documentation already take spam filters into account, so if you're following our best practices, you're already ahead of the game!

But if you're curious, here are the most common strategies to avoid spam filters:

• Do not upload images that are too large in your email. Spam filters often remove emails that are too large in file size, and images are the biggest culprit.
• Avoid email attachments
• Do not use all caps, unnecessary special characters, or misspellings in your email, particularly in the subject line.
• Have more text than images in your email.
• Be consistent in your Sender Email Address

What's a good open rate?

Open rates tend to be around 20%, but it depends on how many people you send your emails to, and the kind of emails you send as well as your audience.