5 Easy Ways to Optimize Your Emails for Mobile

I constantly check email on my iPhone when I am out and about – and I bet you do too.  Your prospective and current clients do as well, so if email marketing is part of your marketing strategy, it is vitally important that your emails are quick to download and read while remaining engaging.

Marketo published a blog post with 5 valuable tips that perfectly summarized how to create effective mobile-friendly emails.  They are all easy to implement, always a bonus!

1. Keep subject lines short

Take a quick look through your email on your phone.  After 4 or 5 words, the rest of the subject line disappears due to space constraints.  Grab your reader’s attention with a short but punchy subject line that captures the meat of what you are trying to say.

There is an email currently sitting in my inbox that does this perfectly. Backblaze, a terrific company I use for online backup, sent an email reminding me that my trial is over and I need to buy the service.  The subject line is “Backblaze backs up automatically,” which is a great reminder of how awesome Backblaze is and one of their major value propositions.

2. Check the text version of your email

Smartphones and tablets can be temperamental sometimes, rendering your HTML email unreadable – I used to see this a lot. Always doublecheck the text version of your email to make sure it looks OK and that any images or graphics are replaced with text.

3. Keep your message short

I skim marketing emails – pretty much everyone does.  If you want to get your message across, stay as concise as possible.   In Backblaze’s email to me, there is a header and 7 other, really short sentences. I can view the entire email on my screen without scrolling down.

4. Don’t go crazy with graphics

I still see companies doing this – and I am looking at one such example right now from a company whose identity shall remain private.  Because the email is so graphic-heavy, I cannot download the entire email.  Guess what? I am not going to read it; instead, I’ll delete it.  Don’t let that happen to you!  Keep your graphics small and simple.

5. Keep your call to action simple

Just as your subject line, message, and graphics need to stay simple and clear, so too does your call-to-action.  My favorites are buttons with clear instructions. Backblaze’s button is at the top of the email with “Buy your subscription now” on it.

No matter what your call-to-action is, make sure the landing page that call-to-action links to on your website is mobile-friendly, just like your email.  Marketo suggests removing JavaScript, Flash, and pop-ups from both the email and landing page to make sure they appear correctly on mobile devices.

What companies do you think do the best job of creating mobile-friendly emails?  What have you learned from them and applied to your own marketing emails? Share your tips below!

Image courtesy of bgr.com

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2012 at 9:00 am and is filed under Email Marketing, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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