Email marketing is just as important as ever, perhaps even more so now that it can so easily be linked to your business’s social media presence. Emails help to foster links between you and your customers, and they’re one of the most cost-effective forms of advertising around. Mobile technology brings a whole new dimension to email marketing because mobile users check their emails far more often and are more likely to follow through with website visits.
Optimizing your emails for mobile is key, and it’s much easier than it seems.
#1 Choose a responsive template
Emails that shine on the desktop can look cluttered and nearly unreadable on a smartphone. There are lots of reasons for this, but an unresponsive template is often the culprit. It’s easy to imagine that smartphone screens are simply scaled-down versions of the desktop, but that’s not always the case. Templates undergo all kinds of changes in terms of layout and resolution when they’re viewed on a smartphone, and the kind of template you choose for your email makes all the difference.
Responsive templates do just that. They adjust automatically to fit whatever screen they’re view on, be that desktop, tablet, or smartphone. Choose one of these templates for your email, and you’ll never have to worry about formatting issues again. All too often, businesses choose an attractive but fixed template only to discover that their carefully formatted email falls apart when read on a smartphone.
#2 Pay attention to your signature
Email signatures are a vital part of any email. Not only can they include basic contact information and a call to action, but they often contain links to social media, crucial for growing that all-important online presence. These are important because they appear on every single email, but they can be one of the hardest parts to get right. A poorly formatted signature (or one that’s too large) can undermine the entire email, making you look unprofessional.
To make a business email signature gmail users don’t even need to leave the application, but to make a good one for mobile, it’s often worth consulting a signature generator tool. Avoid images where possible, especially large ones that will slow loading times down. Don’t clutter the signature with too much contact information (stick to basic details) and certainly don’t try and include animations or videos. Avoid bullet points (these render poorly on mobile) and don’t try to divide the signature into columns.
#3 Use buttons rather than links
Smartphone screens are small, and clicking on a single word or phrase link can be difficult. Instead, pepper your email with colorful buttons. These are much easier to press and draw the reader’s eye towards your call to action. Make sure that you space these buttons appropriately so that users don’t accidentally click the wrong one.
Images are a tricky business when optimizing for mobile. Generally speaking, you’ll want to keep them to a minimum because they put a strain on mobile data as they load. Simple scaled back buttons are essential for making the email user-friendly, however, and shouldn’t use anywhere near as much data as full-color images.
