**If you want to reach out directly to each customer on your database, little is more effective that email marketing.**
We have covered eshots many times on this blog or in (link: https://www.superdream.co.uk/boost/ text: Boost magazine), but today we’re sharing with you a different side to (link: https://www.superdream.co.uk/digital/email-marketing/ text: email marketing). Ask yourself; where do you access your emails most often- a desktop computer or a mobile phone?
With (link: http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/mobileplanet/en/graph/?country=uk&category=KEYACT&subcategory=EMAIL&topic=EMAIL_MAILMOB&stat=MAILMOB1&stat=MAILMOB2&stat=MAILMOB3&wave=wave2&age=all&gender=all&active=stat text: 65% of smart phone owners) saying they access their emails with their device every day, it’s time you started optimising your eshots for mobiles.
Meeting the needs of mobile users
It’s no secret that you should be employing responsive design when it comes to your website, but have you been optimising your emails?
Meeting the needs of your customers has become increasingly difficult in recent years; after all, we are much more mobile and seldom sat at our desks in an office. Every piece of marketing collateral you send to your customers has to meet these changing needs.
Think about it. If you received an email that you couldn’t view properly on your smart phone, the changes are you would delete it without a second though. Your customers are exactly the same. If you want people to convert, you need to make it as easy as possible.
But don’t just take my word for it. Check the analytics report of your last email marketing campaign, to track your open and click-through rates; and see just how many of your recipients are accessing your eshots via their mobile phone.
Creating responsive emails
Creating a mobile-optimised email isn’t as complicated as you might imagine. It doesn’t involve the creation of a completely different template; you just need to use additional code to make both the content and layout responsive.
With this in place, you can ensure that your eshots are legible whatever device they are opened on.
Ensuring your emails are responsive isn’t just about mobile users though. You also need to make sure that they display correctly on all email programmes such as Outlook, Hotmail, and Gmail. Again, this is all about ensuring you meet the needs of your customers. Make it as easy as possible for them to read the content, and you make it easier for them to convert.
Check out (link: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/guides/mobile/ text: this guide) from Campaign Monitor for some in depth tips on everything from layout design to coding to help you create responsive emails.
Tips for making mobile emails look good
If you haven’t got time to plough through their extensive guide though, never fear! We’ve complied a few hints, tips and tricks of our own to help you ensure that your eshots are not only designed responsively, but are created with recipient engagement in mind:
– Opt for a fluid layout in the early design stages. This will mean it can shrink and stretch accordingly, without impacting on the design.
– Don’t overfill your template with lots of content. Bear in mind that this will need to be shrunk down, so you don’t want your eshot to be too text or image heavy.
– Consider hiding certain content on mobile devices. Screen sizes are considerably smaller, so remove the need for users to scroll too much. A simpler design will also work consistently across all devices; busier designs will be harder to build responsively.
– Make sure your CTA’s are thumb-friendly. We would recommend using larger buttons rather than text hyperlinks as these are much easier to tap on a touch screen device.
– Be sure to use ALT-tags on your images. Email clients on certain devices don’t support embedded images, even when they are built responsively. An ALT-tag will tell users what the image *should *have displayed as, helping to improve the user experience.
Email marketing is a hugely important part of any brand’s marketing mix, and can yield great results when carried out professionally. Sure, we’re all subjected to daily spam emails; but by ensuring your eshots are responsive – and follow the rest of our (link: https://www.superdream.co.uk/email-marketing-secrets/ text: secrets to email marketing success) – you can really boost your email marketing success rate.
Still got questions about using eshots for your business promotion? Our (link: https://www.superdream.co.uk/email-marketing-faqs/ text: email marketing FAQ’s) should help you find out all the answers!