The Email Wars

Why Mobile?
It is more frequently on.
It is more likely to be carried “offline”
Larger numbers of consumers are upgrading to mobile devices, not just phones.

Who is using:
25-45 has the highest penetration of mobile
13-17 fairly low still (but I would challenge that they are the ones driving mobile adoption.

Challenges:
Most intimate, most personal.
Rendering on the handheld (how do you send in multipart and deliver the TEXT version to a mobile device that has been sent as HTML OR Text?) Many times we have seen the HTML show up as TEXT Html mix

Know that mobile is already being used. So what are you going to do about it?

NOTE: IF you are slicing your images for your email, KNOW that the email will break apart in images blocks for every slice. Think about chopping your emails into 2-3 parts. Keep the text together.

Musts:
Always insert “View this as a Web Page” and then put a full image on the server
Do not use your nav at the top of your emails, place it at the bottom
Use big bold images that are not sliced
Design in columns
Keep the message near the top (just like you should in all emails) think above the fold, but smaller)
Think about placing your phone number near the top of the email as you are emailing to a phone and they can act on a number faster than they can navigate with a mobile browser in many cases.

The Mobile Landing Page:
Mobile browsers are not forgiving
XHTML has rigid accessibility standards that make is good for mobile
Use Style Sheets (CSS)
Organize logically and consistently across each page and section
Include text links in the main navigation if possible
Use Jump tags in your CSS so as to make it easy to jump to that area of the site from the nav
LESS room above the fold, remember that you are working with less room (Until the iPhone comes out in June… still Jonesing for one)
Submit your site to major mobile search engines
Top Mobile Browsers: Opera (can show what your email looks like on a mobile device), Google or Squeeezer.
Offer a Send Me this Page link – that can send a web page to an email address for later review after mobile browsing