With the help of smartphones and tablets, more email is now being read on mobile devices (36%) then on a desktop client (33%) or via webmail (31%). According to a 2012 study done by Litmus, email opens have also skyrocketed, as a full 80% of emails seen on a mobile device are now actually looked at.
With email now truly having "legs" literally it is super critical for marketers to understand and create effective mobile mail. What an email looks like on a 17 inch desktop high definition screen may look completely different on a 4 inch mobile device.
Below are some "tricks" to help increase your open and response rate when designing a rich-media email for a mobile device:
- Less is more! The concept of keeping it simple and to the point is more important then ever. If you try to fit 100 pounds of content in a 25 pound bag, nothing good is going to come of it. It is extremely easy for a user to hit the trash can button on a mobile device and if the email is overwhelming it's simply going to be a "delete" and on to the next one. You need to now keep your emails, short, sweet and to the point, with a simple call-to-action!
- Keep your subject lines short. Several studies have shown that shorter subject lines dramatically outperform longer ones.
- Don't forget to test, test, test! Before you hit the send button to 5,000 of your potential customers, make sure all your images load and render correctly using multiple devices and email clients. Big images will make emails harder to load and may default on devices with low memory. What may look good on a desktop or laptop using Outlook, may look terrible on an iPhone. Also, check that all links are working correctly and aren't creating 404 error landing pages.
Email isn't hard and is still a great way to reach potential customers. But with everything else, if your readers can't see it, the best email could be all for not. Small changes to how you build and design your email can significantly boost your results and create a bigger revenue growth for your business.