Good email design starts with your pre-header – the plain text section above the HTML in your message. Used effectively, this piece of content can build and protect your reputation and your relationship with subscribers. Many brands overlook pre-headers or add them as an afterthought, but subscribers often read this piece of content first and use it to decide whether to read the rest of your email.

What you choose to include in your pre-header will depend on your email content and subscriber base. We recommend:

Must-haves:

• A link to the hosted version- include this at the beginning of all HTML messages to allow subscribers to view your message in all its glory without downloading the images. Overall, it’s best to use plain language – most people don’t know what ‘rendering’ means in terms of email.You can even have a bit of fun with this – usually very dry – link, as Lastminute.com do with their pre-header “Gone a bit Picasso? See it clearly here“. Make sure the tone of voice suits your audience, though.

• A link to a mobile version – if B2B subscribers are particularly important to you, you should consider hosting a version optimised for mobile devices. Make this link short and place it at the very top of your message so it displays properly on a Blackberry or other mobile device.

Nice-to-haves:

• An unsubscribe link – having this in your pre-header can reinforce your reputation and prove you’re a responsible email marketer. Traditionally unsubscribe links appear in the email footer, but including it in the pre-header too puts the subscriber in control and can reinforce trust in your brand.

• Instructions on making sure subscribers receive your emails – a simple prompt such as “Please add from@address.com to your address book” is sufficient for most subscribers. Depending on their technical know-how, some subscribers will benefit from a link to detailed instructions for each email client on how to add you to their address book.

Optional extras:

• Reinforce the relationship- this is your chance to remind your subscribers why they’re receiving emails from you. Tread carefully depending on how and when your subscriber data was collected and the strength of your existing relationship – you want to avoid your content being seen as spammy.TruPrint’s “You are receiving this email as you have set up an account at Truprint” and iWoot’s “You receive this email because you’ve signed up” work well as a gentle reminder to subscribers that they registered to receive information.

• Send to a friend – this is a good prompt to include in your pre-header, especially if you’re sending a non-subscription-based message and you’re interested in list growth. Remember that the functionality of this link may vary depending on the technology that you use – you’ll need a way to capture this potential new subscriber data.

• Optimise your pre-header for snippets – if you’ve got lots of Gmail or Outlook users in your database, consider optimising your pre-header content for snippets. Most Gmail users can see a snippet of the message next to the subject line, so this is the first thing they’ll read – before they’ve even opened your email. Outlook also displays the first line of text in its notifications and even if the email client doesn’t specifically highlight this content (Hotmail, Yahoo! etc), it’s still the first thing your subscribers will see once they open (or preview) your message, so make it count.

• Try different combinations – as always, what works for one group of subscribers will not necessarily work for another. Use what you already know about your customers and try a few different combinations of content in your pre-header to find what works best. Try to make the best use of this valuable space – remember that if you include too much, your message will be shifted further down the page.