7 things to avoid when creating a mobile email campaign

With a massive 40% of emails now opened on mobile devices, brands and companies are under pressure to ensure that all of their innovative e-marketing campaigns are mobile-friendly. Check out this advice from advice from Matthew Zajechowski, outreach manager, Digital Third and an accompanying infographic from the guys at ReachMail, which explains what not to do when creating a successful mobile email campaign.

Metrics that track email marketing data show a trend that marketers cannot afford to ignore.  People are moving away from desktop and laptop viewing, preferring instead of view emails on smaller devices. Even if the viewing is difficult or awkward, surprisingly readers don’t default to their larger standby computers. Instead, they delete or close the email and settle into happy surfing on their smartphone or tablets, giving all their attention to websites with excellent mobile appeal.

This provides a problem for websites who haven’t upgraded to a mobile-friendly format. They become losers in the world of mobile shopping, mobile browsing and mobile marketing in general. New apps and strategies to pitch products, coupons and custom promotions to mobile consumers arise every day.  However, until a business has created the right environment and mindset to interact mobilely, they can’t make use of any of the new advancements.

The result is that the unprepared lose out on the opportunity for mobile conversions, mobile profit and a wider mobile audience. With 75 % of Americans relying on smartphones for email and 40 percent of all email promotions being opened on mobile device, the losses will be too big to ignore.  To make a good first impression – which will be your only impression – you must embrace mobile strategy now.

Incorporate the website characteristics are optimal for a small screen size. Smartphones and tablets come equipped with the options to resize content, but not everything looks good or works properly when reduced to fit a smaller scale. Webmasters must design mobile site with these concerns in mind:

• Less text – Whether on the page on as part of an image, too much text is tedious to read on the tiny screens of on mobile devices.  A wall of text is unattractive and mostly illegible. Keep text to a minimum and say only what is essential – and make that engaging.
• Properly-sized photos – Don’t use photos that are too big or too small. Aim for the sweet spot when it comes to pixels: between 360 and 480.
• Make the key features of the page easy to find and use – Many visitors are looking for specific utilities: they want the search box, the shopping cart, the member account page, and the check out portal. Shoppers shouldn’t have to click several links and be escorted through several pages to finish any type of transaction.

If you can only optimize a little marketing or website content at a time, consider email segmentation. Segmenting email lists will help you funnel the right traffic to the select content that’s optimized for mobile.  For example, content designed to attract Millenials, a young group wherein 80 percent use smartphones to respond to marketing, should definitely be mobile-friendly.  Creating special mobile email campaigns for women shoppers should also be a priority, as they are 10 percent more likely to click through emails on mobile devices than men. In the end, all marketing mail and website pages should fit mobile standards.

Finally, proper mobile strategy should include knowing the smart time to send promotional email. Aim for the before lunch window, between 10 in the morning and noon. The early evening, such as between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., is also a time when users like to open and read promotions by email. For more information about improving your mobile email campaign, check out the Infographic from Reachmail below.

Connect with Matthew on Twitter and Google+.