Pros/cons of using ! punctuation in preview text?

[lisapeake]

For my company, we avoid using exclamation marks in our Subject Lines because we have concerns about deliverability / being marked as Spam.

Does the same rule apply for Preview Text, or should we consider it a more open space to experiment with the exclamation mark?

What do others do? Any links to blogs on best practices for preview text would be appreciated as a quick Google returned virtually nada of relevance.

TIA!

Lisa

[theScott]

The easy answer is to A/B test. Best practices don't matter because they aren't referring to your audience. They're just standardized averages. What you need to know is how your recipients respond.

Is it bad if I say, though, that I don't know that this is even an issue worth worrying about? Personally, I would want to test the preview text as a whole rather than being concerned with an individual punctuation mark. The preview is really just a line of ad copy with the goal of getting the click. I would test different sentiments, writing styles, CTAs, lengths, etc. - just like any other short-form ad copy. I'm betting those more macro-level tests would have a larger impact than the micro issue of whether an exclamation point exists in the text.

[MFrankJohnson · Accepted solution]

Q: We avoid using exclamation marks in our Subject Lines because we have concerns about deliverability / being marked as Spam. Does the same rule apply for Preview Text [in emails], or should we consider it a more open space to experiment with the exclamation mark?

Short A: n/a

Longer A:

These big dogs are responsible for sending / testing over 25% of the world's non-spam email. If it's not on their radar it should probably be considered a low priority concern.

- see 15 Email Deliverability Best Practices for Gmail (SparkPost)
- see Make It to the Inbox—Not the Spam Folder—with Litmus Spam Testing (Litmus)
- see Top Tips to Avoid Spam Filters When Sending Emails (SendGrid)
- see How to Avoid Spam Filters (MailChimp)
- see A Marketer's Guide to Email Deliverability: How to Avoid Email Spam Filters (HubSpot)

As a side note, SparkPost also has some excellent information about ramping up sends to large lists (>1M contacts) and warming up sends to lists in general. Just excellent stuff every email marketer should indelibly impress in their brains. 🙂

Finally, gotta shout out to our HubSpot girls Lindsay Kolowich and Beth Dunn for their awesome job directly addressing the use of exclamation points in email. Enjoy.

- see Do You Really Need That Exclamation Point? [Flowchart]

(see image)Hubspot - Beth Dunn

Nice.

Always happy to help you build on HubSpot.

Best,
Frank

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www.MFrankJohnson.com

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[jennysowyrda]

Thanks for the tips @MFrankJohnson!

I want to pull in a few other users who have discussed email marketing before to get them in the conversation: @Jems212, @sksonu, @theScott, @DMurphy1 do you all have any thoughts on when exclamation points are appropriate?! 😉 

Thanks, 
Jenny

[DMurphy1]

I also think it has a lot to do with your personas. I used to work in higher ed, so using an occasional exclamation point was acceptable since out audience was predominantly 16 and 17 year-olds and much of our content was fun and conversational. Now I work for a company who sells tech products to law enforcement. I never use them in email now. 

As the infographic says so well, use your words to make your point.