Challenging your audience to find what they want on a screen that is no more than an inch high is a surefire way to render apathy rather than foster return readership.
Once you understand Provider preferences, design the content specifically for its intended use. Make it simple to engage. People will navigate away from an email in seconds if it does not load.
Mobile Email Tips
- Mobile emails should be brief and require little scrolling.
- The call to action should be as close to the top as is possible.
- Use a single-column setup.
- Calibrate your message to display well on a wide range of mobile devices
- Use a multipart multi-purpose Internet mail extension (MIME), which includes both an HTML and a text-only version in the same message and displays the version that the user's email client is set to display.
- Another tactic is to link to a mobile friendly version of your email at the top of the creative, allowing mobile recipients to easily view a text or browser-based version of the message.
- Simplify your mobile email messaging; avoiding HTML in favor of quality copy
Please Note: Most mobile email readers, including those installed on Symbian devices, Palms and BlackBerrys, can not display multiple side-by-side columns. They will haphazardly reorganize the page back into a single-column screen.
Think about how you link. Hyperlinking text will not always render and remain clickable. Ensure that your links will be clickable by the broadest range of readers possible.
BlackBerry Tips:
- Marketers should limit header sizes.
- Put as much text as possible on the opening page and place links and images at the end of a message so as not to distract readers.
- Because BlackBerrys have minimal JavaScript capabilities, marketers should not use scripts within the HTML page.
- Since mid 2007, both Enterprise Service and Blackberry IS display the HTML part of a multipart message, but with all HTML tags removed.
- This is a key distinction, as you must ensure that what remains in your HTML email after formatting and tags are removed will retain a coherent meaning. Blackberry recognizes URLs even when they are hyperlinked, and will display both the hyperlinked text (but not as clickable text) as well as the full URL, which will be clickable. Symbian, the most popular OS outside of North America, behaves similarly.