According to the latest comScore survey, around 20% of users are reading their email on their Smartphones. If your target market is the professional business user or the youth market, the numbers are skewed higher. Email marketing to this demographic requires additional thought. Follow these 9 steps, and your email has a much better chance of being read.
1. Include a plain text version of every message. It may not be pretty like HTML but it is at least clickable on some platforms and if that causes even one more conversion, it’s worth it.
2. Don’t overcrowd links, this will help them stand out from one another. With the size of the screen being so small, crowded links become lost links.
3. Don’t use large images as links. On some devices, by the time that image has downloaded, the user has already moved on.
4. Use a good subject line to catch people’s attention. Battle of the inboxes happens on mobile too.
5. Use the right alt tags for your images. Some phones, while having the ability to display HTML, won’t render images. When this happens, you want “alt” text to show — giving the user some indication of what your message is.
6. Have a clear call to action. While this is important in all email messages, it’s especially important on a mobile device where the screen real estate is limited.
7. Test mobile emails on different smartphones. While action alerts or appeals may look great on the IPhone it could look screwy on a Blackberry. Will HTML5 save the day? Maybe, but until then, test. Then test again. And one more time.
8. Include a mobile style sheet. This will help to increase the number of mobile devices capable of viewing your message.
9. Write good content. This isn’t exactly mobile specific.