What's Trending: Mobile Mail

What’s Trending: Mobile Mail

By Matt Kersey Published in December 2013 issue.

There are currently three different platforms (or clients) that can be used to access email: webmail, desktop and mobile. I’ll explain each of them briefly.

• Webmail is defined as emails viewed within a web browser on a computer. Some popular webmail browsers include Firefox, Chrome and Safari.
• Desktop clients allow users to read emails by opening an installed program on their computers hard drive. Notable desktop email clients include Outlook, Thunderbird and Apple Mail.
• Mobile refers to emails viewed on a smartphone or tablet. The difference here is the device is portable and has a vertical screen size. Readers can either view these emails through an app such as Yahoo Mail or Gmail, or through a web browser like Safari or Chrome.

In early 2012, the mobile email opens rate finally overtook webmail and desktop email opens. As 2013 winds to a close, the gap continues to grow in favor of mobile email. Smartphones and tablets have officially changed how we read our email. In fact, mobile email opens reached a new high of 50% in September of this year.

What does all this mean for your business? Well, if you send promotional emails like e-blasts, monthly newsletters or purchase recommendations to your loyal subscribers there is a high probability they are going to be read on a smartphone or tablet. Or attempted to, at least.

It has become increasingly important for businesses to optimize their promotional emails to fit this trend. A recent survey by Return Path revealed that 63% of US consumers say they will immediately delete an email if it isn’t optimized for mobile.

Don’t turn your once loyal subscribers into unsubscribers. Optimize your emails for mobile devices. Here are a few tips to help get you started:

• Mobile-optimize your emails by creating them between 560-580 pixels wide. This universal width fits all devices.
• For legibility sake, don’t use font sizes smaller than 14 points.
• Space your links at least 40 pixels apart so readers cannot accidentally click the wrong link.
• Use responsive design in your HTML. Coding with responsive design allows developers to restructure and resize content to fit a myriad of different screen sizes. You can even use alternate graphics files for smaller devices.