[FAQ]

Hello,

I’m a UX designer based in London, and I’m relatively new to the world of email design. I’m used to using progressive disclosure on websites to keep interfaces clean, but I’m struggling to apply the same principle to a long-form email newsletter I’m working on. It just looks like a massive wall of text.

How can this concept be used within the technical limitations of email? Are there reliable interactive elements you can use to hide and show content, or is it more about using visual hierarchy and “read more” links? I’m looking for practical ways to make a content-heavy email feel less intimidating to the reader.

Any advice from email design pros would be brilliant.

[Jeff Bullas]

An excellent question that gets to the heart of sophisticated email design.

Short Answer: Progressive disclosure in email is a design strategy that shows readers only the essential text and image content upfront, while keeping more detailed information hidden until it’s requested. This is typically achieved through ‘read more’ links or, in more advanced cases, interactive elements like accordions.

The goal is to reduce cognitive load and make a long email feel scannable and manageable, enticing the reader to engage further rather than overwhelming them.

The most common and reliable way to use progressive disclosure in an email is with a ‘teaser’ approach. For each section of content in your newsletter, you provide a strong headline, an engaging image, and a short, one-to-two sentence summary of the topic. This text provides just enough information to pique the reader’s interest. You then follow this with a clear call-to-action link with text like “Read the Full Story” or “Learn More”. This turns your email into a scannable table of contents that links out to your website, rather than a wall of text that nobody will read.

A more advanced, but less supported, method is to build interactive elements directly into the email. Using clever code, it is possible to create things like an accordion or a toggle for an FAQ section. A user can click a question, and the text for the answer will expand right there in the email. This keeps the initial layout clean and allows the user to choose what they want to read.

However, it is critical to understand that these interactive techniques are not supported by all email clients, most notably older versions of Outlook. If you use them, you must code a “fallback” so that the email still looks good and all the content is accessible in those clients. Because of this complexity, the simple and effective ‘teaser text’ with a ‘read more’ link remains the most practical strategy for most marketers.

Cheers,
Jeff

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