Over half of all emails are now opened on a mobile device. Yet most marketers are still sending emails designed for desktop computers. The result is a major decline in clicks due to a poor user experience. This trend in email marketing will continue increasing at a staggering rate unless marketers start delivering mobile friendly emails.
In a current study by Movable Ink “66 percent of emails were opened on either a smartphone (47.2 percent) or tablet (18.5 percent) in Q1 2014”. Most mobile email opening happened on iOS devices. In fact there were more iPhone-driven email opens than on the PC as a whole.
So what does this mean for your business? When it comes to email marketing, you need to shift focus from desktop optimized emails to mobile. Key adjustments include font size, scale, content, images and call to action.
Mobile Email Marketing Tips
Simplify Your Messaging
Keep your email short and to the point. Narrow your messaging down to one simple point and eliminate unnecessary elements that are not part of the primary message. This is all about simple, smart and easy to read messaging so get your copywriting hat on!
Narrow Screen Width
iOS devices zoom to fit to the width of the screen while all other mobile operating systems don’t. With that said I recommend email widths of 320-550px. Many marketers are already using responsive design optimized for the small screens of mobile devices but some mobile devices do not respond well to responsive design yet.
Large Font Size
Fonts should be set larger than traditional emails or web fonts. Optimal sizes are: Headlines 22px and body copy 14px
Top & Bottom Call To Action
A key element to any email marketing campaign is the call to action. With desktop emails it was traditional to place that call out after the body content, however with mobile emails you need to place the call to action above AND below the body content.
Minimize Images
Use images sparingly, and carefully consider image size. Most mobile devices (except iOS) block email images by default prompting a user to turn on images.
Landing Pages
While this article is all about email marketing on mobile, we can not ignore the landing page. So if your email campaign converts with a click, the landing page must be mobile optimized. No matter how mobile friendly your email is, the potential targeted user must land at a location that can complete the conversion cycle on a mobile devise.
With these points you should be able to start implementing and delivering more effective email marketing campaigns that reach users wherever they are. However, don’t forget some of the basic email best practices such as frequency, subject lines and targeting, they are still relevant to mobile. I’ll touch on these topics in future articles.