Although for some time now consideration has been given to how websites are viewed on mobiles and indeed in many cases websites are built specifically for the channel, this has not always been the case with emails.
Receive an html email today on your iPhone for instance, and even now it’s usually hard to read the text after it has been rescaled to fit the small screen. As a result you very often you find yourself zooming in and then scrolling not just up and down, but from left to right just to read the content. Even if your eyesight is good you may still need to zoom in to be able to click on a link or Call to Action. If this is the case in your emails then you may have already lost potential customers.
So not only do we now have to think about your email creative rendering correctly across all the many desktop email clients, but we now have to consider mobile devices as well. A potential minefield.
Some companies are recognising the issues and are designing and building emails with mobile devices in mind. For example RAC and PruHealth have both taken this into consideration and Curve now delivers emails for them that render differently to the desktop version if viewed on a smartphone. To put it into context 17% of the ëopensí on a recent PruProtect newsletter broadcast to brokers and agents was on a mobile device, predominantly iPhone, and the resultant click through was as good as for the desktop version of the same email. We found that emails that are optimised for mobile way outperform standard emails, so it is definitely worth keeping this in mind.
So how do we go about it?
The first job is to get the balance right between a “creative” design and one that can work well on mobile. The first thing to remember is that the optimum design width that we should work to is 600 pixels wide, and if possible we design the email so that it is just a single column wide.
However as mentioned earlier we often have to balance creative design with functionality and therefore often we are asked to design using two columns of 300 pixels wide instead. For mobile then this would be split exactly in half showing the left hand column of 300 pixels in the screen only. By using style sheets we can prioritise content by hiding or even moving elements from the right hand column and positioning them on the left if viewed on a mobile device. The desktop version remains as you have designed it, 2 columns. But for mobile, although a longer email, you can at least read the text without having to scroll around and zoom in.
So the next time that you email your customers give a thought on when they are most likely to receive and open the email. If you think that mobile is the where they will be viewing it then make sure that what they will see can be read easily, and links can be clicked on easily.
See our RAC e-newsletter for an example of a mobile friendly email.
If you would like to discuss how we can help your company render emails across mobile devices call Curve today- +44(0) 20 8773 5592