A couple of days back I invited replies about why I’d put a whole lot of dots at the start of my email.
Congrats to those who guessed right (or right enough!)… and won a copy of my Easy Content Creation ebook!
So, here’s the reason I did it…
Simply because Gmail, and other email providers, show a preview of the email contents beside the email subject.
It’s supposed to be helpful so you can “peek” inside the email without even clicking to open it.
So you can decide then and there… while you’re scanning through your overloaded inbox… if you want to read it.
I personally don’t do this when reading my email. I just look at the sender and subject and make my decision.
But I’m sure plenty of people also read the preview text.
On this occasion, I wanted people to open my email if the subject was interesting to them.
But I DIDN’T want them to see that I was starting off with a joke. And possibly have Gmail give away some of the punchline.
So I just filled up the preview space. 😁
Meaning the only way to see any more of the real email content was to open and read it.
I chose dots as a filler because they’re super-quick to skim over… and land your eyes on the actual opening to the email.
Now, I’d NOT do this with every email. Plus, there’s actually a far easier way to avoid giving away the opening.
That’s by using the built-in “preview text” capability that comes with modern email.
You can specifically set the preview text to whatever you want. So the likes of Gmail won’t grab the opening of the email and show it.
It’ll just show the preview text you want instead.
So I could have made it say, “No previews today!” or anything appropriate for that particular email.
The preview text is kinda like a subtitle. The subject line being the title.
And that’s why I don’t ever use it for my emails.
Because it’s just one more thing to think up!
Call me lazy if you like… but I have a hard enough time with ONE subject line… let alone a sub-subject line like the preview text!
Plus the preview text isn’t always displayed.
Not everyone uses Gmail or other systems that show it by default. Sometimes people have configured their email software to hide it.
I’d rather put my effort into the bits that are always displayed…
… the things that email readers use to make decisions about whether to read the email. Or not.
Most importantly, that’s the sender… and the subject.
On this occasion, I used the dots to just nudge everything down in the email a bit. So Gmail wouldn’t show the actual start of the email.
Another way I could have done this is to not tell the joke in the opening. And make sure the opening lines were suitably curiosity-evoking… so that someone would want to click and open the email.
Then I could deliver the joke a few lines in.
But there’s no rules here. Just lots of things to try and see how they go!
As they say there’s more than one way to skin an… uhh… email?!
Having so much scope for creativity… and just trying things out… is one of the delights of email!
Writing the dots was the way I did it this time.
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Chris Milham