Go mobile! 7 Hints and Tips to make your emails look good on smartphones

The amount of time spent on our smartphones is on the up, and the biggest chunk of time that is spent on mobile internet is used for checking and sending emails. To take advantage of this fast growing mobile sector – and to get the best from mobile email marketing – it is extremely important for your emails to be optimised for smart phones. Only then you can make use of the advantages of email marketing over the mobile channel.

Here, we have attempted to summarise the most important points you should consider:

• Multi-part
Since emails are read on the computer as often as on the mobile phone, it is very important to send your email as a multi-part in every scenario. The recipient must always be able to choose between an HTML and a text only version to get the most from your email. Additionally you should always include a link to a web version of the email, since most mobile browsers have greater technical capabilities to view those emails than mobile email clients.

• Keep it short
The key to successful subject lines and sender names is to keep them brief, as different devices have very different methods of visualising your message.  The first few words have to be enough to convince the recipient to read on. Keep your text to a minimum in mobile messages, concentrating on the most important offers, key words and topics. Where possible, make up a maximum selection of three different headlines from your generic campaign template and test successively the different lengths, to find the right amount of mobile information for your recipient. Remember, you can only see about 100 characters or 20 words at first glances so you need to provide a reason to persuade the recipient to continue reading.

• Design
The average resolution of a smartphone screen is 320 x 480 pixels so it doesn’t matter how pretty the layout is – it doesn’t make the screen any bigger. Graphics and pictures have to be designed for mobile: small, but still legible. Using a professional email marketing software such as eC-messenger, will enable you to automatically create a mobile version with one simple click. The mobile device itself doesn’t matter, but the software running on that device does: a problem every email marketer knows only too well. Not even the “usual” email clients can deal with CSS equally. Try to make your life easier, by finding the template that works best with the most of them. This way, you can avoid building a large number of different versions.  Try and make links easy to tap on with a finger on the touchscreen, and make the separate where possible.

• Give choice back to the user
Involve your customers and let them decide themselves if they’d like to receive the mobile or web version of your email: both options should be available. During the registration process, you should ask about their mobile behaviour. According to MarketingSherpa’s Email Guide, over 80% of email marketers still don’t ask subscribers about their preferred channel, so you have a great opportunity to give your recipients the option and maintain their interest.

• Keep it relevant
Consider beforehand what content and information from your campaigns will offer your recipients additional mobile value. On the most personal of all means of advertising to customers, it is more annoying to get an unwanted email via a smart phone, than it is on the computer or laptop – so, you’ll only engage your audience if you’re providing interesting content.  And retailers struggle with small smart phone screens when it comes to m-commerce (mobile commerce) which is why it is even more important to concentrate on less, but more relevant offers and to put “call-to-action” elements in the forefront, to be seen immediately and to make it easy to act.

• Grow your mobile list
Mobile is an important channel when integrating with email marketing. Remember that you can effectively grow your mailing list using this communication medium. Therefore, you should have a well-placed option to subscribe to your email marketing on your mobile page. A further possibility to engage your customers or potential buyers about your email marketing is using location-based marketing, enabling them to subscribe via text message via POS or POI. The user simply sends a text message with his/her email address to a specified number, which he/she can find on site. Professional broadcast tools (such as eC-messenger) can automatically add this email address to their list directly from a text message.

• Test, test, test
As always in email marketing, you should be testing your creative on as many different mobile devices as possible. Have a look if all images are displayed correctly and if all text is easy to read. Also, test how links are rendered on the different devices – because some aren’t supported.

Once you’ve got the basics right, you can then think about the next steps, which could include location-based marketing and geo-targeting.  We can help you out with any of your mobile marketing needs.  Simply get in touch with one of our experts on info-ukecircle.com and we’d be delighted to assist you.

This article is a summary of eCircle’s newsletter "Inside Digital Marketing". If you wish to receive further news from the email and social media marketing sector please subscribe here