Hello,
Thanks for the follow up questions, it's helpful to know that this is still an important feature for you so that we can make another attempt at getting this implemented. I'd like to address some of the questions, but first I'd like to give some background information first around the status of "Not Currently Planned"
Some of you that participate in our feedback forums more often may have noticed there have been a lot of status updates lately, recategorizing posts into various new statuses. From my time on our community team I've heard a lot of feedback around wanting to know where a certain request is in our development pipeline. Previously, ideas would typically stay in a "Voting Open" status in perpetuity and not much more information was really given externally unless the feature was implemented. We wrote a blog article about the new statues here, but in short, the idea is that we want to provide more transparency into the process. I give that background, because we'd like to start using the "Not Currently Planned" status more often. There's only so much we are able to work on at a given time, so it's hard to see what we're working on without also seeing what we're not working on right now. It's not meant to be a permanent "no, we'll never do this" in every case but in cases like this more of a "not a current priority". I'd really like to get to a place where we could give insights into what's happening in the next month, quarter, 6 months, etc. pretty reliably. With 1,700 various community ideas we've had to go through and update, we'll need to defer ones that might not be a priority in those time frames. Especially something that is as heavily used and gets as much feedback as our email editor. I'm a believer that an honest less-than-positive answer is better than the boilerplate "we'll pass your feedback along" answers where nothing is really ever learned. Given this is all a new strategy for us, maybe this means we need to make updates in the future to separate ideas like this where we could call it "deferred" or something that makes it clear it's not a permanent no.
With my feedback philosophy ramble out of the way, let's talk about the "this is a test" verbiage. Some great ideas shared from moving the test message up to the top, to appending the subject line. I think there are also some other schools of thought around the current placement of the test text:
The test verbiage was originally there to help explain why the unsubscribe and other footer links don't function like a real email, which is why it's near the footer. Not to say we can't have it both places, but historically that's why it is at the bottom.
Not having anything additional in the subject line allows you to view the subject line with it's real length in your email client of choice. You can see if it's too long and gets cut off. If it allows proper space for your preheader.
Not having it at the top also doesn't interfere with your preheader. If the test preheader read "This is a test" that wouldn't be very useful, although this problem could probably be solved with additional code.
Not having the message at the top allows you to see your message as your subscribers would, paying attention to what is "above the fold" and accessible without having to scroll at all.
What I hope the takeaway will be here is that, we are still trying to get this implemented but it won't be within the coming months. What I will do is send this to some different internal teams and try to get some more exposure around the idea while we build our case. Please continue to vote and comment, and we will make adjustments as things change.
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