Email Preheader in gmail
Gmail emails with preheaders
Above are two examples of emails with preheaders, that is, the grey part of the text that follows the subject. The first email has done nothing special so Gmail grabs the first chunk of the email and does its best. In this case it's a bit of a mess, but I've seen worse and you will too if you look.
The second example has specifically managed the preheader, making it stand alone.
Systems like MailChimp allow you to manage this yourself sort of, but Gmail itself has no way for you to explicitly control what is in and out of the preheader. If you're an early stage startup you want to send out compelling emails but don't necessarily want to think about the overhead of using tools yet.
So here's what you can do.
The second example has specifically managed the preheader, making it stand alone.
Systems like MailChimp allow you to manage this yourself sort of, but Gmail itself has no way for you to explicitly control what is in and out of the preheader. If you're an early stage startup you want to send out compelling emails but don't necessarily want to think about the overhead of using tools yet.
So here's what you can do.
The text we want to be the preheader has to be at the beginning of the message, but there is something special about the gap between that and the "Hi Greg". The "blank space" is not actually spaces as Gmail ignores groups of these. Instead it is repetitions of HTML codes "‌ " which are zero-width non-joiners (‌) and non-breaking spaces ( ). How do you get them there? Just copy the chunk of text below and paste it into the first part of your email. Obviously change the text, then send it to yourself and check on PC, tablet and mobile to make sure it looks OK.
Your front-loaded preheader here
Dear xxx,
Dear xxx,
With special characters
With just spaces and carriage returns
Enjoy! Thanks to this article on litmus.com for pointing me in the right direction, although getting the special characters was fun.