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It’s a Mad, Mad Mobile World for Email

email-marketing-contentBy Jill Kurtz
Online Career Tips Contributor

There’s no need to wonder if your email is being opened on smartphones and tablets – they are. You need to optimize and test your messages for these small screens. If you don’t, your intended recipients won’t be able to read your information. It’s that simple.

Latest Data on Mobile and Email

The Movable Ink US Consumer Device Preference Report from Movable Ink (data from October 2014 -December 2014) shows that smartphones and tablets now account for the majority of email opens in every state.

  • About half of all emails are opened on smartphones
  • iPads and iPhones account for 58 percent of email opens; Android smartphones and tablets account for 8 percent of email opens
  • 55 percent of Android users read an email for 15 seconds or more; 40 percent of iPhone users look at emails for 0-3 seconds
  • The most opens on mobile devices happen on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, from 6-9 a.m. for phones and in the evening for tablets.

See the full Consumer Device Preference Report.

Optimizing Your Email Messages

As you compose your message, keep in mind that some readers will savor every word of a message right on their mobile device if they have time. Others will mark the email as unread and go back to it, save it in their inbox to read on their desktop, place it in a to-do folder, or–worse case–delete the email.

Pay attention to both format and content to ensure that your email can be read on mobile devices means. Mail Chimp offers these best practices for optimizing your email messages for mobile readers:

Content, Content

Make your content great. Engaging content is the most important part of your email. Readers are willing to look at text, images, and video on mobile devices. In fact, messages with meaningful visuals are generally more appealing. (Clip art that gets in the way of the message can have a negative impact.)

Shorter, more concise emails are generally better. Offer essential information in your email along with links to more complete content, if applicable.

Design Considerations

If your email uses a design template, make sure it is designed to be read first on a mobile device. Although it might seem counter-intuitive, multi-column layouts work well. With two or even three columns, the reader can zoom the text to a comfortable reading size without having to scroll left to right while reading.

Design your emails with clear sections to assist with mobile-email scanning. You can do this with header text, dividing lines, numbered paragraphs, or even a relevant image.

Pay attention to font size. Many readers have trouble reading tiny text on mobile devices. Font sizes of 17-22pts are recommended for mobile emails.

Finally, use thumb-friendly buttons for calls to action and links. Big buttons are not only more visible on mobile screens, they’re also easier to interact with. If you use text, it helps to have links underlined in mobile emails to make them stand out.

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