Johannesburg, 13 Jun 2013
Optimising your e-mails for various mobile devices (including tablets) should be a key component in your e-mail communication strategy, as up to 30% of people will unsubscribe from an e-mail when they are subjected to a sub-optimal mobile experience.
"Customers are more likely to read your e-mails if they are optimised for the device on which they choose to read them," says Nicola Els, Commercial Director - Striata SA.
According to emailmonday, mobile e-mail will account for 15% to 65% of e-mail opens, depending on your target audience, product and e-mail type. Els says mobile e-mail usage is soaring, as a variety of mobile devices/tablets flood the consumer market, and so devising an effective mobile e-mail strategy is vital.
Could responsive design be the silver bullet in your mobile e-mail strategy?
As stated by Jordan Cohen in his article, "Go Mobile, or Go Home": "The effort required to code an e-mail for responsive design can be intensive, and support for media queries is spotty - many marketers complain of breakage when their designs are viewed in unsupported e-mail clients and Web browsers."
Els points out that applying one approach, ie, responsive design only in your mobile e-mail strategy is not the answer. "Consider various mobile e-mail design approaches and how they cater to the customer profiles on your e-mail database. Bear in mind that as little as 2% of people will reopen e-mail on a different device."
Els lists four mobile e-mail strategy options e-mail marketers could consider:
1. Stay the same: but by not doing anything, you risk losing 30% of your customers if your e-mails aren't optimised for their devices.
2. Consider scalable e-mail design: using scalable design, you can expect your e-mail to be readable and clickable, no matter which device is used to view it.
3. Apply responsive e-mail design: using specific media queries to render different versions of the same communication depending on the device it is viewed on. This option provides more flexibility in that a screen size often means a different way of interacting with a communication, eg, a smartphone held in one hand with that same hand being used to interact with the device may mean a top left position for a CTA in order to render the highest possible click-through rate. The downside of this design technique is that it does not cater for all mobile environments.
There is currently very little information available on the results following the implementation of a responsive e-mail solution. So, whether or not e-mail click-through rates will increase, for example, is still unknown. This technique should be seen as a long-term investment that will significantly enhance the user experience.
4. Use a scalable and responsive design approach: this way, you cater for almost any mobile anomaly. Scalable e-mail design is one design that is easy to code; however, it is not real mobile design. You can therefore overlay responsive design, so communications can adapt in specific environments, eg, iPhone and Android.
Els states: "Striata has a preference toward a combination of scalable and responsive e-mail design. However, we believe that you need to use analytics to understand the environments which your customers use most regularly to access your communications. You can then make an educated decision about the appropriate coding resources to execute your chosen strategy.
"To sum it up - following best practice for designing e-mails that are optimised for all mobile devices and tablets will build trust with your customer base, increase engagement and avoid having your e-mails deleted. After all, isn't this what you expect when you hit 'send'?"
Share