Chances are some of you are reading this on your mobile phone or tablet. When it comes to email, statistics say that 65% of all email is being read via mobile devices, according to Movable Ink’s 2013 U.S. Consumer Device Preference Report. In 2015, these numbers are even higher. How are you creating a better mobile experience for your email subscribers?
Difficult, But Not Impossible
It’s true that mobile-friendly (responsive) email templates are more difficult to code than mobile-friendly web pages. That’s largely because it’s harder to get a consistent look across a multitude of email programs and devices than it is across four major web browsers. This is why most marketing agencies aren’t providing this service to their clients. It is difficult, but not impossible.
Large Images Aren’t The Answer
The tactic a lot of companies still use as a workaround is creating large images that have text embedded in them. Two issues with image-heavy email blasts are:
- Your email is more likely to be flagged as spam and end up in the Junk folder due to the low text-to-image ratio
- Your email takes longer to download on a mobile device
Not a good strategy if you ask us.
Simple Is Better
Mobile phone screens are so small that your email template design and layout must be inherently simple to accommodate these devices. Larger font size, large buttons, properly-cropped images, and one-column layouts are best.
Your layout for the desktop version of the email, however, can have two- or three-column layout, as long as your mobile version is coded to display only a one-column layout.
An Effortless User Experience
At the end of the day, you want to create a pleasant user experience for your email subscribers — no squinting to read the text, no zooming in to click on that button — because it leads to higher open rates and conversions. And although many companies haven’t taken the leap yet, many of our clients already have. It’s time to jump on the mobile bandwagon.
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