MindComet

Mobile Email Design DOs and DON’Ts

Style Campaign has always been one of my favorite email marketing blogs, primarily because they seem to focus on niche topics such as video, animated gifs and now, mobile.

Mobile is on top of every marketer’s minds who have any involvement in email. It’s an exciting time for us in the industry. In a relatively short time, the entire email landscape is going to be effect by mobile’s influence. It’s not a question of “if”, but more a question of “when” it will take over the majority of email client market share.

So with that it mind, it is becoming increasingly clear that email designs must be able to conform to mobile devices. This article at Style Campaign goes into much detail about the do’s and don’ts regarding email design. It’s a fantastic read for anyone interested in mobile-centric revamping your newsletter.

Key takeaways:

The peak of mobile email use is around 7AM, when everyone is waking up. This means people’s vision is bleary and their overall effectiveness of handling their phones properly is decreased. Because of this, we must design our emails to make it easy for the beleaguered, pre-caffeinated masses.

44x44 is the perfect dimension for a fingertip to touch a link, according to Apple. With this in mind, there shouldn’t be any competing links within that block. Convenience for one-handed users is key.

Big buttons make for a better mobile user experience than tiny ones.

Most people handle their phones with their right hands. Keep general ergonomics in mind when and where you place specific icons and links.

Text under 12px will scale up, which in turn can break your design. Auto-scaling can be prevented by adding the style ”-webkit-text-size-adjust:none”

While it is a best practice for your email’s navigation to resemble the site’s navigation, that’s not necessarily the case for mobile email.

So with the increase of mobile use, will we see all best practices slowly change and evolve? Will we see mobile’s influence effect all email designs from this point on? Time will tell.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jul. 06, 2011

Mobile Email Usage On The Rise

According to a recent study conducted by Campaign Monitor, mobile email is on the rise. Now this shouldn’t be much of a surprise as mobile devices are becoming more and more prominent pretty much everywhere in the world, but what is surprising is the rate at which mobile use is rising.

With the release of the iPhone, iPad and Android phones, the mobile market share has gone from 4% to 20% in 24 months. This, to me, is insanely quick growth. Of that 20%, iPhone unsurprisingly accounts for the vast majority with iPad and Android falling behind in pecking order. Even more alarming is the rate at which Desktop clients such as Outlook, Apple Mail and the like have dropped: almost 11%.

Go here and check out this fantastic article. It’s well worth your time.

If this isn’t evidence for more mobile-centric email designs, I don’t know what is. If your ESP allows for a mobile alternative, be sure to utilize it.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jun. 16, 2011

Our Mobile Addiction

In a recent study conducted by Bright Hand, it was concluded that the majority of people with mobile email-retrieving devices (Blackberrys, iPhones, etc) are “addicted to email”, naturally.  The average user checks their email regularly: 5 times a day, while the majority checks their email every time they receive a new message.  Some are even so obsessed with their mobile device, that they sleep next to it, just in case an important email arrives in the middle of the night.

To further prove the obsession, 83% check their email while on vacation, 53% in the bathroom and 12% while at church.  Ridiculous.

You can read the entire report here.

Thanks to Dylan at theemailwars for bringing this survey to light.

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Posted by MindComet on Aug. 16, 2007