Tips from the top
Tink Taylor is managing director at e-mail marketing provider DotMailer
Research your recipient base. The data you receive from your e-mail service provider can give you a really good idea about what clients and mobile devices your recipients are using. Do a large percentage of your recipients regularly use a mobile device? Is it the same segment every time? Do they use multiple devices or a mixture of clients?
Get a designer who knows what they are doing. Designing traditional e-mails that render across every e-mail client is tricky enough, but if you throw mobile into the mix, things become even more difficult. Getting someone that knows what they are doing will pay dividends.
Keep your e-mail width less than 580-600 pixels. Mobile devices tend to be narrow, so design your e-mails with as small a width as possible to ensure they display well on a mobile device.
Don’t forget the usual best practice advice. Don’t focus so much on mobile that the normal rules including segmentation and targeting go out the window. You might have a perfectly rendered e-mail, but if the content isn’t well targeted, then it won’t get good results.
Don’t make your text too small. While you don’t want your e-mail to look silly on a desktop, you will want to ensure your text is as big as possible, so that mobile users don’t have to zoom to read it. Consider the length of your content as well.
Accentuate your call to action. Really pull out your call to action so it is the first thing your recipients see. Make sure the “clickable” area is big in case your recipients are using a touchscreen device.
Use images. Images can convey a thousand words. Remember on the iPhone they render automatically without the need to “click here to download”. Use them to give immediate meaning to your e-mail messages, especially when you have little space to work with.
Don’t forget to optimise your website. If a recipient reads your e-mail and then clicks through to a website that isn’t optimised for a mobile device, and is therefore hard to read, then you probably won’t get the conversion. Make sure you factor your site – or at least your landing page – into your strategy.
Get the subject line spot on. How many times have you gone down the inbox in your phone deleting messages before you have even read them? Most of us do it all the time, and love “swooshing” away unwanted messages – it’s satisfying. Therefore, for mobile recipients, even more than usual, you’ll need to make sure the subject line really delivers.
Read more on how to evolve e-mail for mobile users.
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