Email, despite the challenges, remains one of the best ways to reach out to customers. However, this does not mean email delivery doesn’t have to change with the times to stay relevant. One of the biggest challenges today is cross-channel optimization, considering recipients now access emails from many devices ranging from desktops to smartphones and everything in between, all with different screen size. As much as 43% of emails are now opened on mobile devices, and for many marketers, that rate has already reached 60%.
Most small screen devices now shrink original emails. This raises the risk of content becoming unreadable and the format going awry. About one in every three recipients are known to unsubscribe if their emails are not readable. This can be really dangerous for marketers looking to increase their email subscriptions if content is not adjusted for different screen sizes and formats.
Here are some considerations to keep in mind in order to optimize email for all the devices in existence now:
- Instead of creating emails for the desktop first and then shrinking it down for mobile, try designing mobile first.
- Simplify the navigation (i.e., avoid indexes).
- Pay attention to design elements. For instance, use a minimum of 13 pixels, and high contrast. Transform horizontal assortments into vertical, as an effective alternative to scaling down images.
- Place the most important content upfront, visible immediately on accessing the email. Scrolling down is cumbersome in some mobile devices and a majority of recipients would not bother with the effort.
- While visual content is soaring in popularity at the cost of plain text, text remains the content type of choice for small screens, and many consumers actually have images disabled by default in their email accounts. A good option is to give a good text based hook, which would entice the consumer to delve deeper, and maybe turn images on. But the underlying message and the call to action has to be explicit.
Keeping up with email trends will be important moving forward. Email engagement is a great way to get one step closer to a prospect familiarizing themselves with your brand and services. And, with the tools and functionality provided with marketing automation, you can effectively create a customer score based on individual engagement. Wouldn’t you like to see which of your email subscribers could be hot leads quickly and easily?
