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Almost every study points to the fact that consumers are more likely to access their inbox on a mobile device than their desktop. In fact, Movable Ink’s research shows that nearly 67% of emails are opened on mobile devices.1
But nearly half (42%) of marketers say that they rarely or never create responsive emails.2
The thing is, it’s not that hard to create responsive emails. With the right design hacks, email marketers – whether they’re a team of one or a team of twenty – can start creating more effective emails that look great on mobile and engage consumers who are on-the-go.
Here are 10 quick design hacks that brands can use when they’re designing responsive emails:
1Source: Movable Ink Blog “[Research] Mobile Email Opens Hit an All-Time High in Q4 2015” http://blog.movableink.com/mobile-email-research
2Source: Salesforce “2015 State of Marketing” http://sforce.co/1KPTzHl
Introduction
A lot of brands create regular email newsletters with multiple columns to split up content. That might mean that you have new announcements and upcoming events in a side column and major content or deals in the main column.
On mobile, columns can be tricky to navigate. Many brands have opted for infinite scroll websites and emails need to follow this “scroll-down” philosophy.
Single-column emails should position the most important content on top, with buttons and prominent links showing customers the next steps.
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“Oftentimes with multi-column layouts people will have to zoom or scroll on their smartphone to see everything. This can make it difficult for them to navigate the email content and act on the call to action. Using a single column template will make your content much more flexible for all screen sizes.”
Andrea MochermanGravi8 Marketing
1Ditch the Multi-Column Approach
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“Ensure that the subject line and pre-header text are working to support each other, and keep the subject line somewhere between 30 to 45 characters for mobile devices.”
Jessica PavilukVP of Marketing & DesignV12 Group
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2Watch the Font & Subject Line
The smaller the font, the harder it is to read on mobile devices. In general, it’s better to make the font too big than too small. A size of 16px is great, although you might want to experiment with sizes all the way up to 20px or more.
The font style should be considered as well. Send a variety of emails with different fonts to see which looks best in your emails.
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Create a True Hero Image
The hero image can really become a superhero image in a mobile screen. Most customers aren’t likely to explore your email much further if it requires scrolling, so this is your big chance to drive action.
That said, it’s important to make sure that your hero image can render properly. Sometimes, hero graphics will appear to be smaller than the text, especially any header text that you include.
“Remember that text set up for fixed width email is illegible by default on your mobile. Emails should be sized to respond to screens from 550 pixels down to 320 pixels for mobile.”
Jack CunninghamHead of DigitalTwenty
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“Avoid crowding URL links too closely together, which makes it difficult for fingers to press on the correct link. Use pixel padding to allow for area around or between
clickable areas.”
Jessica PavilukVP of Marketing & DesignV12 Group
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4Thumbify Your Links
Every time you include a link in your text, remember that users will have to access it with their thumbs. That means getting landing pages and websites ready for mobile devices, but also making sure that the link itself is possible to “thumb.”
Bigger font sizes can help, but more importantly make sure links aren’t packed together. Too many links in a single paragraph can lead to users pressing the wrong link and getting frustrated.
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Keep the Best Stuff Above the Fold
In responsive design, the “fold” is the point of an email where users have to start scrolling to look at more content. That means emails need to show the most important content above the fold.
Think carefully about what graphics and copy go into the top section of the email. That’s the first thing your subscribers will see when opening your email and, if they don’t scroll, it’s the only thing they’re going to see.
“If you want [mobile] users to convert… the best strategy would be to make your calls to action above the fold with easily accessible actions. These can take the form of large, square-shaped buttons that take users
to your product.”
Kenzi Lindamood Marketing ManagerStirista
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The hardest part of responsive design is creating content for different devices. Many brands have to create separate graphics and layouts for mobile and desktop emails. They don’t think about how to build separate graphics or calls-to-action for iPhone users versus Android users. A lot of the time, they don’t have the technology to do it.
But there are contextual marketing platforms (like yours truly) that allow companies to create email content that changes depending on the device on which it’s opened. That means that a hero image to download an app could be placed at the top of an email when it’s accessed on a mobile device or an email could offer exclusive iPhone downloads to iPhone users but show something else on a desktop or Android device.
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6Different Content for Different Devices
for anything interesting or anything that could be deleted. Your content needs to drive action immediately or it’s likely that the email will be forgotten or deleted after the initial open. Brands are using dynamic, responsive content to create sales specific to weather conditions, calls-to-action depending on device, and to offer real-time inventory information right from within an email.
If a customer opens an email, what are they going to see? What’s going to make them convert and what might make them hesitate?
This is what brands need to consider when they’re developing a content strategy for mobile. Customers likely aren’t spending a lot of time checking their email, they’re just flipping through their inboxes looking
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“With the smaller mobile screen devices you have less real-estate and the primary screen space should be dedicated to the most important message or feature that you want to deliver. You’ll need to understand your content strategy to know what this primary
message or feature will be.”
Renee Triemstra VP of Strategy & Customer Experience
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Build a Content Strategy
One of the most important data points in mobile emails is location. This can make all the difference in the world: if your customers get an offer and there’s a map showing that the closest store is only a few blocks away, they’re far more likely to walk over and redeem that offer.
Geo-targeted emails can create this kind of seamless, personalized experience and see huge results. AIMIA, for example, saw a click-through rate increase of 66.67% when including a map of locations where customers could redeem rewards points.1
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1Source: Movable Ink Blog “Geo-Targeting in Email Marketing: Why Maps Can Be So Powerful” http://blog.movableink.com/geo-targeting-email/
Make Your Emails Local
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9Create Big Beautiful Buttons
In the quest to “thumbify” every email, marketers should create buttons that can be pressed from the confines of a smartphone screen. Buttons should be sized for optimal mobile rendering, which means resizing them to about 48px.
Social media buttons often get left behind in the shuffle when brands
are creating responsively designed emails. If you’re trying to encourage social sharing, make sure that Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn icons are comfortably clickable, too.
With the right technology, you can even integrate live social media content from Instagram or Twitter right in the email.
Most email marketers are pretty familiar with the fundamentals of A/B testing. Splitting your audience and sending out two different emails is crucial to finding out what kinds of subject lines, content, and creative converts the best.
With responsive emails, you also want to see how each email renders on every device. This can be a tricky process to test out. Often, email marketers can test responsive emails on their own devices but there’s no assurance that the email will look as good on an Android if all you’ve done is looked at it on an iPhone.
Then, there’s the fact that A/B testing essentially gives half of your audience the losing creative that doesn’t perform as well. However, with real-time A/B testing and creative optimization, you can actually test different variations on creative and copy. When one proves to be more effective than another, you can switch the losing creative with the winning creative, so the majority of your subscriber base sees the best possible email.
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10Test, Test, and Test Some More
Creating responsive emails that look great on mobile devices isn’t a nice-to-have anymore – it’s a necessity. While many marketers are still hesitant to commit the time and resources to making sure every email is responsive, others are striking ahead and offering real-time experiences with dynamic content.
Local maps, weather-targeted sales offers, and more have become common practices for email marketers that have already perfected the art and workflow of designing responsive emails.
Brands that are still only creating piece-meal responsive email strategies should start small by streamlining the design process. From there, it’s possible to start taking responsive to the next level.
Want to get started? Try out InkBrush, Movable Ink’s free tool that converts any .PSD file into HTML and allows for slicing and re-slicing for fully responsive, beautiful emails.
Ready to get dynamic?
Contact us at [email protected] to learn more about Movable Ink’s full suite of features, from real-time A/B testing, weather and geo-targeting, and more.
Responsive in Perspective
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Founded in 2010, Movable Ink pioneered the application of contextual marketing to email. Movable Ink clients can use any email service provider to deliver dynamic content that changes, in real-time, according to the context of each individual customer. More than 250 innovative brands including The Wall Street Journal, eBay, Finish Line, and Saks Fifth Avenue use Movable Ink to Market in the Moment and optimize their email campaigns to drive ROI. The company is headquartered in New York City with an office in London.
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[email protected] 1-800-270-6033movableink.com
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