Regardless, operating as a direct marketer, you obviously want to be able to get the best results from your marketing efforts, but at the same time it’s not a free-for-all and you can’t necessarily do whatever and however you wish in order to gain customers and make sales.
Marrying email and mobile strategies together can be a complicated process. However one simple step is to test to make sure the email renders on all mobile devices. If your customer base is predominately a BlackBerry-carrying one it becomes even more important.
Designing for the mobile web is nothing particularly new. Although it seems that mobile style-sheets haven't proven to be quite as popular in email, despite the advantages they provide to device-based viewing. Also keep in mind that some devices are more adept at handling HTML email. Apple and Android devices generally display HTML emails intact, making the optimisation requirements minimal. The use of these HTML-friendly devices for the consumption of mobile email and web is statistically higher, simply due to their near-seamless simplicity. In general however, viewing HTML email on a mobile device can be fiddly and even on the iPhone it's possible to have text automatically rescaled to a size that's nearly unreadable or in a way that can botch your design. And so, optimising your emails for the mobile environment can be essential, though laborious.
Each and every mobile device has its own unique standard settings to take into account. BlackBerry devices, for example, don't display images by default, whereas iPhones and Android devices currently do. A mobile screen is small - at first glance no one’s going to see much of your email newsletter, especially if it’s designed to fit a PC screen instead. Some initial suggestions to accommodate the sparser screen include having single column design layouts, tighter subject lines, bigger font size, greater image vs. text balance considerations, bigger buttons for links and an overall narrower message width. Wide emails often require horizontal scrolling, especially when there's a large image involved. So keep it top-down, not left-right. The correct use of images is one of the biggest considerations when designing an email for the mobile screen. Furthermore, consider download of data/ charges to the user and make sure images are light to ensure speedy and comfortable viewing.
Typically, a mobile screen is about 350px by 380px, but of course this varies and will continue to vary. iPhones are an email marketer’s ideal as they usually fit the emails to the screen size automatically. However this is not true for all devices and it means that, if your email is designed for a larger screen, your subscriber will have to do some tedious scrolling to get to the other side of the email.
Keep the HTML design of your email simple - the simpler it is, the more likely it is to render well in mobile browsers. Additionally, we all know the importance of a powerful subject line and nothing’s changed when it comes to mobile. Your subject line is your first attempt at hooking your reader and if it succeeds, they’ll open your email. Other than that, the majority of textbook email marketing tips and best practices still apply to mobile email design. Remember that good design is always backed by responsible coding and effective layout. If you are designing for the user and device in mind, you will be in good shape. Prepare for blocked images by inserting ALT text into your emails and remember to design your layout so that your call to action is clearly visible. Also bear in mind that mobile screens are modest, and that clicking on links may be difficult. And as always, conduct a test send to check that all coding and links are rendering correctly before you send the email to your subscribers.
In summary, smart phones like the Apple iPhone, Android and others are on the ascent, these have large, easy-to-navigate screens (in mobile terms) however the trusty older mobile generation with Internet access is still the predominant phone; so always design your emails to enable easy up-down navigation, with text that wraps to the width of the mobile screen.