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1st February 2016

Email on the Move: How to Design Messages for Mobiles

6
minute read

Sending emails to your customers is a great way to keep them informed. Email marketing also shows very good return on investment – for every £1 spent, businesses get an average return of £38 (DMA, 2015).

However, the way we read emails is changing. More and more customers are reading email on their smartphone and on the go. Statistics show that 72% of people now check their emails on a smartphone (Econsultancy, 2016) while three-quarters of Gmail users (the email provider from Google) looked at their emails on mobile devices (TechCrunch, 2015).

So it’s important your email marketing looks as good on a mobile device as it does on a desktop computer. Thinking about how people use their smartphones and the differences in how they interact with email can help you make the most of this marketing channel. Here are some tips to help you.

Shorter subject lines

The subject line of your email is the first thing your customer will see, so it needs to catch their attention. This is especially true on mobile, where an email provider or app might only display a small number of characters from the subject line. For example, on an iPhone you only see the first 35 to 40 characters (including spaces) of an email subject line.

To get around this, make sure your email subject lines are short and to the point. Alternatively, keep them longer for your customers reading the email on a desktop computer but put the most important information at the very start to cater for those reading email on mobile devices.

Bigger and clearer design

It’s important that your email design is as effective on a phone screen as it is on a computer screen if you want people to be able to read it. Remember that a phone screen is much smaller than a computer screen, so everything needs to be bigger for people to be able to see it easily.

This includes the font size and any links that you include (for example, linking to promotions on your website). People will be using their fingers and thumbs to scroll through the email, so if links are too small it’ll be difficult for them to click them – and potentially you’ll lose out on a sale.

Go easy on images

Video and images all make emails more interesting and appealing to customers. But if they try and view a picture-heavy email on a mobile device, there are a few problems:

  • Many email providers don’t show images automatically, so readers might miss out
  • Too many images increases the size of the email and it’ll take ages to load
  • If readers have to scroll through lots of images to get to the information, they’ll get bored

The best tactic in designing email messages for people to read on mobiles is to choose a few smaller-sized images and use them carefully. Make sure the image isn’t essential for understanding what the email is saying, as if the pictures don’t load your customer won’t understand the full message of the email.

Strong, simple message

The design of an email that’s going to be read on a smartphone needs to be clear and strong – and so does what you say. Make sure your written text is easy to read by using short paragraphs and bullet points, rather than long-winded descriptions.

All email marketing should include a clear ‘call to action’ – something you want your customer to do next. This could be visiting your website, downloading a voucher or calling you. Write the call to action in a direct way (for example, “Visit our sale now”) and make sure the link is big enough to be pressed by a thumb or finger. You could even use a click to call button to make it easier for customers.

Test, test, test

Before you send out any email marketing, make sure you test what the email looks like on different devices. You can do this by emailing it to yourself and checking it on your smartphone or tablet, or emailing it to friends and asking for their feedback.

There are also websites which allow you to test this out without sending anything: Litmus PutsMail is one example. However, you have to pay for these services when using them in bulk so they’re probably wise to invest in if you intend to do a lot of email marketing.

As more of your potential customers check their email on the go, on smartphones and other devices, it’s important you’re creating email marketing that works for them. Keeping subject lines short, the design clear and the message simple can have a big difference to their experience.

These five tips are just a few ways you can start to think about email marketing with your mobile customer in mind. For more help, take a look at these three articles;

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