The Email Wars

We are in the midst of another massive shift in the inbox. It is not the inbox itself, but where the inbox lives during the average day of business communication or consumer marketing outreach. Today, it should be known and understood that people are checking email everywhere and at all times, looking on iPhones, Blackberry, Treo, Windows Mobile and maybe even devices we don’t rank as the top mobile platforms yet. So I wanted to put the thought out to you….

Should you care?

Given the skyrocketing growth that’s happening, I think we know the answer is yes. However, it leaves an open question:
“Do you know if your audience is reading your emails on mobile devices?”
We all assume that they are, but many marketers have not even begun to test mobile clients, nor do they know what tools to use. In the end, they might not understand the basics that should be applied to all email campaigns.

Testing:
How can you tell which devices or email clients your subscribers are reading emails on? Well, there are four great ways to test:

1. The Ask: Why not take the simple route and present a survey to your audience at an opportune time. A good time to do this is when you put together your, I suggest quarterly, profile update/email preferences campaign. This is a good time to progressively profile. Add/subtract data points, email frequency preferences, and ask subscribers which email client they use, or if they read on mobile. This will help, but will not solve the situation completely. Many people out there read emails on both mobile and desktop email clients. However, it should give you some insight.

2. The Link: We see this quite often: A “View Mobile Version of this Email” at the top of the email (which most frequently used to be the “View as a Web Page” link). Run a report on use of this link in your emails to start finding user-defined, action-based data to roll into your strategy. This has holes in it as well, but is another way to test.

3. Email Litmus test: There’s some great software out there. You can use a feature in your existing ESP or email platform to get an almost perfect report on the email clients being used without asking. The company I like in this testing space is http://litmusapp.com. I have seen some reports from them that work well and it is one of the easiest systems to use.

4. The Holy Grail: Pivotal Veracity has recently launched a new tool that gives some of the most in depth testing we have ever seen. Not only will this solution give you the inbox client data, but it will also help you to build profiles on where they read email, which dates and times reads happen in each platform and more. This is the best solution on the market right now.

Now that you Know: Best Practices that work across traditional and mobile.

So now that you have the data, what should you know about best practices, from a mobile perspective, in your email campaigns?

1. Subject Line: If you are working on long subject lines and your subscribers are active mobile users, then your subject lines are most likely being truncated. So what is the value in a subject line that cannot be understood in its entirety? Not much. A good rule of thumb is keeping it short and simple so that the most important part of the subject line is easy to read, understand and process.

2. Sender ‘From’ Field: Do you really need to call yourself NAME.com? I look at so many brands that still focus on a From name with a dot com ending. Why? If we are getting an email from you should we not be connecting with the sender name and dropping the NAME.com? We are online and you are taking up space where you could be using those valuable characters for something that connects better.

3. Pre-headers: Some of you might still not be clear as to what an email pre-header is. Note everyone that uses a text header with the “Having trouble reading this email? View it as a web page (link).” That is a pre-header. Now in mobile that pre-header is often the first thing someone reads after the From name and Subject line. Would you really start out a conversation by highlighting the fact that there might be a problem with this email? Not the best idea here. Better yet you can use that same pre-header to focus on the main point of the email you sent. Think of things that reinforce: what is inside, the main benefit of opening and reading it, or the discount that they might get. This is a great chance for you to set expectations before they even read it. It will also work well in the regular inbox preview pane. Make this a new static element that you always implement as it will lift your success in all email clients.

4. Size: Yes size matters. Now not as much on every client (as iPhones tend to work better in displaying the email to fit the screen) but with other mobile clients that are not as good at this. Why run the risk if the majority of your audience is reading on mobile? Safe width in an email for mobile is currently seen between 500 to 550 pixels wide. Now personally, I love emails that go 650-700 pixels wide, but you might start testing yours on mobile clients or segmenting your lists for readers you know are on mobile in a skinnier format.

5. Logos and Images: Is your logo going to be seen on the mobile client? Will your images be the right size to load? Are you images formatted to have an ALT Tag behind them so that if images are suppressed or even the mobile connection is slow that they can read what needs to be there? I have seen many campaigns that, due to forces beyond control, render poorly due to images and often lack image alt tags. You should be tagging all images regardless, as you might already have subscribers that are suppressing images in their email client by choice or by default.

6. Text Versions: Don’t count on your email platform to always be smart enough to show the text version of an email, or know on which device the email is being read. We often see issues with Blackberry or Windows Mobile where marketers assume that the multipart email will suffice. If you are not preparing multiple formats, you can run the risk of your email marketing platform placing 3-6 scrolls of HTML code into your email that meaning nothing to your subscribers. What this means is that your actual message and content are shoved down lower and you risk losing them right there. Always make a text version ready to fill in where you don’t know or your email platform does not know.

The Next Steps:
So, you are an astute email marketer and have now tested your campaigns, followed the above best email marketing mobile practices, but are still missing the final step. What if they actually want to click from your email and read, react, buy, comment or engage? Are your landing pages or web site optimized for a good mobile experience? From the 1000’s of campaigns I have seen, I would wager over 90% of sites are not ready for this type of engagement. So what can you do?

You can build a mobile version of your site. Now typically, this doesn’t mean the entire site, but select important areas of your site that provide a path for easy mobile exploration. You can do this yourself by using software that helps you to structure a mobile site, or simply focus on building the landing pages that support a campaign. There is always code out there to support the detection of a mobile email client and redirect to a site experience that works. Here is one (if you are reading this email on your desktop it will come across odd) that we recently launched for a campaign built for mobile detection and experience. Try it on your mobile device if you want: http://touch.wacom.com/m/ – or you can see the site as it lives on the web at http://touch.wacom.com.  Either way, we are making sure that if mobile is a consideration that the thought has been placed ahead of the action.

Game On:
So to wrap this up, mobile is important. Not just to you, but to your customers. It is time that you start to test, measure and plan for mobile, leading with your email campaigns and following up with your websites. This change upon us is being driven by a rapid move in devices and consumer adoption. Will you be ready?