2 Wrong Ways to Approach Your Mobile Email Strategy

3 minute read

Upland Admin

Mobile email opens have been increasing every year since the advent of the smartphone. Not accounting for mobile at all would be a huge mistake, but there are actually a number of other ways you can accidentally make your campaigns fail on mobile. Mobile now accounts for 45 percent of email opens – an increase from only 11 percent three years ago, HubSpot reported. Desktop email opens have simultaneously dropped by 53 percent and only account for 28 percent of total opens. These statistics demonstrate that your customers are already using mobile to interact with your messages. Here are some critical mistakes to avoid when working with mobile:

1. Not using responsive design – Designing emails for mobile can be tricky, especially when you don’t know which device recipients will read your message on. Responsive Web design is an easy way to get around this because it adapts to the size of the screen being used to view it. Not convinced you need a responsive email design? The wide variety of smartphones and tablets on the market today make it difficult to create an email template that will display well across all these different formats.

When a recipient decides to read or delete an email, the email’s ability to render correctly on a mobile device is a major factor. In fact, an American Express study revealed that 69 percent of mobile users will delete an email if it isn’t optimized for their devices. Because mobile users may account for a huge portion of your audience, they should not be ignored. However, one of the best ways to select the right design is to know which email clients your customers are using.

2. Not accounting for customer preferences – Mobile devices mean users can be connected to their inboxes at all times of the day and night, which may make them less tolerant of a poor email experience. If you are contacting mobile users more frequently than they would like or sending content that isn’t targeted to specific interests, recipients may end up unsubscribing. By implementing a preference center into your email program, you can hold onto these potential unsubscribers and ensure that you’re only sending as much email as your audience wants.

In addition, you need to know which email clients subscribers are using to provide the right kind of content. For example, some mobile platforms support HTML 5 video, but it’s a good idea to have a backup plan for those that don’t, according to HubSpot. Because people often read emails on the go, you need to realize they may interact differently with messages.

Related blog content: 3 Common Mistakes in Mobile Email Marketing

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