Marketing

3 Tips for Mobile Email Marketing

Many industry experts agree: if 10 percent or more of your digital property’s traffic is coming from smart phones or other mobile devices, it’s time to optimize for mobile. Better get those mobile-optimized email templates fired up because according to a recent statistic from email analytics provider Litmus, nearly half of all email sent gets opened on a mobile device! In fact, according to this graphic from email service provider Emma, smartphone users check email on their phone more than any other activity, even making phone calls and sending text messages:

Not only are emails more likely to be opened on a mobile device, but mobile email also generates the largest share of unique clicks (Experian), indicating those on a mobile device are more likely to contribute to future actions on your website or other digital properties to which you are driving email marketing traffic.

If you use email marketing within your digital strategy, these data points make it pretty hard to overlook the need for mobile-optimized campaigns. Read on for our top three tips for mobile email marketing success:

Design with the Smallest Screen in Mind (consider responsive design)

If your design, content and layout render well on even the smallest screen, chances are it will look just as polished on larger screens. That’s why you usually can’t go wrong if you design for a mobile experience first. Having succinct messaging that shows up on a small mobile screen, leaving white space around design elements such as images and call-to-action buttons and removing any visual clutter where possible are all great ways to ensure your email appeals to both a mobile and desktop audience.

Also, consider the use of responsive design (a design technique that optimizes the viewing experience regardless of device, screen size, resolution, etc.) when producing your email templates. Currently, only 12 percent of email newsletters use responsive design to optimize their templates for mobile–meaning that 88 percent are missing out on an opportunity to streamline the process by only creating one version of an email prior to deployment.

Include Clickable Visual Elements

Whether your thumbs are perfectly average or even on the small side, chances are you’ve accidentally clicked a link within an email when you didn’t mean too, simply because the email was not designed with you – the mobile user – in mind. One of the best ways to ensure your audience is clicking purposefully is to make accompanying images clickable; whenever you include a link within your content, add the same destination URL to an image or graphic you are using to illustrate your point. Not only does this offer users another way to access additional content but it also capitalizes on the trend of digital audiences gravitating towards all things visual.

Complete the Mobile Experience

One of the biggest mistakes that email marketers make is to only optimize the email itself for mobile audiences. Given that email is a great way to drive traffic to your website or other digital properties, you would be remiss to end your optimization efforts with the email message itself. Even if it’s not feasible to optimize your website, blog or social channels for mobile, consider optimizing a few highly frequented landing pages that will be receiving traffic from all of your email efforts.

Looking for more information on email marketing? Check out our side-by-side comparison of leading platforms in the Top 10 Email Marketing report. You can also browse exclusive Business-Software.com resources on marketing automation and management by visiting the marketing research center.

This post originally appeared on Asking Smarter Questions and is republished with permission.