Email consumption and interaction is moving from the desktop to the mobile device. A recent Return Path report showed an 82.4% increase in the last year in email opens from mobile devices both smartphone and tablet.
Many organizations utilizing email marketing have yet to even think about how this shift to mobile engagement affects their experience and goals.
If you’re just starting to explore how to best leverage email in mobile, we’ve put together 5 tips for mobile email marketing success to start with.
1. Know Your Mobile Email Audience
The best place to start is to know how your audience is engaging with your emails. Having the ability to see what email clients and devices lists are using to open and read your emails is of big value. You’ll also want to pay attention to the growth rate here in the last couple of years to forecast what’s coming. Our email marketing service tracks email client and device use per campaign.
The example from one of our clients below shows that iPhone, iPad and all iOS engagement is over 21%. Throw in Android and it’s over 24.4% total for mobile on this campaign.
The Return Path report also found that 85% of all mobile email opens are via Apple/iOS devices.
2. Email Design Width & Space
Email marketing designs have had a standard width in the 600-pixel range for quite some time. At the mobile level, the iPhone has a width of 320-pixels and, since right now that device is considered the standard for smartphone screens, you may want to design your emails at a width of 640-pixels for an exact scaling of 50%. Also keep in mind that an iPhone screen in landscape format is 480-pixels wide.
3. Mobile Touch
A click of the mouse is a very precise movement, while a finger or thumb touch on a mobile screen is not. Apple recommends a 29×41 pixel size for any clickable items and also consider using spacing of at least 10 pixels around these objects. The goal here is to minimize accidental clicks or touches and improve the mobile experience.
4. Font Size Matters
Whether on a desktop or a mobile device, web and email is still often a “scannable” read. We recommend a font size guideline of 30pt font for headlines and at least 14pt font for body copy. Don’t forget that when you put together content, avoid giant blocks of text, which will lower your ability to get the reader’s attention for sure.
5. A Mobile Experience
If your use of these mobile email marketing tips gets your email opened and read, don’t let the experience end there. Having a mobile site or responsive web design will create further engagement and success when your users move from your email marketing content to your website, blog posts, or other media you’ve linked to.
