Email marketing for mobile devices

Email marketing is a changing industry due to the spread of mobile computing. Customers who previously viewed your newsletter on full-sized monitors may now be reading their email on their cell phones, which means the best design practices have shifted to accommodate smaller screens.

According to Pew Research, nearly 20 percent of mobile phone owners – which includes standard cell phones with some kind of internet access as well as smartphones – have read their email online. The same number of users have viewed some kind of information, such as news, on their web-enabled devices. These percentages are sure to increase as smartphones become more popular and powerful every year, so consider the ways to improve your email marketing campaign to reflect the trend.

Poll and test

In order to gauge the importance of configuring your emails for mobile devices, ask viewers for their preferences and do some testing of your own. Insert a poll on your website asking viewers how often they check their email remotely, or include the question on your next newsletter. If your industry relies on the patronage of typical smartphone users, such as young adults and teenagers, frequent travelers or tech-savvy individuals, expect a large number of your newsletters and emails to be viewed on limited screens.

If your website or social media page has a link to sign up for your email marketing materials (which it should), consider listing two options: standard or mobile format. While it may seem like a daunting task to create two separate pieces of copy for each release, making a mobile-friendly version can be as simple as using plain text to remove graphics, which can facilitate easier viewing and quicker loading for limited mobile platforms.

Whether or not you have the resources to create separate email and newsletter layouts, run a test to determine the quality and ease of viewing your materials on mobile devices. Use as many different phones as possible: Google (Android), Apple and Blackberries all have similar operating systems, but a piece that reads well on one won’t necessarily look as good on the next. Also try reading your email on a non-smartphone platform. If your copy ends up tiny and unreadable, and graphics make loading a lengthy process, viewers may not have the patience to scroll through a magnified version or wait for your complex graphics to appear.

Investing or altering

If you’ve found a large number of your email recipients read their email remotely, you may want to consider fully investing in mobile marketing. A separate website for mobile viewing and emails containing both HTML and plain-text attachments will give you the best exposure to the most viewers.

For businesses that don’t have more time or money to invest in expanding their existing email marketing campaign, but want to capture the mobile-using market, altering your current design may be the best bet. Consider limiting the number and size of your graphics, or forgoing visuals and sticking with plain text.

As most web-based mobile email applications limit the size of the initial view, beware of inserting valuable text late in the message. Many users will forego clicking the “read more” link at the end of the first section of your email, so make sure important information such as basic company details, promotions and key details are at the top of the message. Save anecdotes and less-important points for the end.

If creating a mobile-oriented website to direct phone users to is out of your reach, feature a social media link prominently in your text. Most major social websites have mobile applications, meaning your page is automatically formatted for easy viewing, whereas your website may be difficult to navigate. In addition, many mobile users are accustomed to such apps as Facebook Mobile, and that familiarity may encourage a closer view of your page.

Have you viewed your own email marketing materials on a mobile device? If so, what kind of problems did you encounter?

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