How To Optimize Your Emails For Mobile Devices

open emails on mobile devices, and Experian Marketing Services found in a 2013 study that Internet users in the U.S. spent most of their time checking emails on their mobile devices, averaging 14 minutes to an hour a day. Email marketing is an important tool for businesses. If you want to take advantage of all the opportunities available, then follow these email optimization strategies. 1) Follow up with people who visit certain pages on your site Let’s say someone visited a page on your site more than once looking at a certain product but hasn’t purchased it. That’s bad, right? Actually, it’s good and bad. It’s good because clearly they’re interested and have it in their head they’re going to buy it at some point or at least they want to. But it’s bad because they haven’t bought it yet. And there has to be a reason why. It’s up to you to figure out why and give them a little push toward purchasing. You can do this with an automated email system where you send out a FAQ email, one that tells them how amazing that product is, a testimonial-based email from customers who’ve purchased that item or an email asking them to reply with any questions about the product or your business. One of these could do the trick to get that person to buy your product. 2) Reconnect with those who abandon their shopping cart It’s common for people to visit a site, add an item to their shopping cart and then leave without purchasing that item. This is so common that the average online shopping cart abandonment rate is 67.89 percent. There are different reasons why this is happening, but a big reason is that people are easily distracted. One way to get distracted visitors back to your site is through email recovery campaigns. If you’re tracking your shopping cart page, which you should be, and hopefully have the shopper’s name and email address from past purchases or them filling out that information when they started the checkout process, then you can send them emails. Send out a series of two to three emails with the right messages and timing. The emails in this campaign could have reviews or testimonials from customers who’ve purchased the item, special offers or discounts, or a strong call to action to get them back on your site. 3) Send out special offers Every shopper loves a good sale or receiving a discount. Many people may not need to buy anything from a store, but if they hear about a sale or receive a coupon, then chances are pretty high they’ll buy something because of the good deal they believe they’re receiving. To better appeal to your customers, send them information on sales or special offers by email. Depending on what you’re willing to offer, you could send one of these emails to customers weekly, biweekly or monthly. Your customers will appreciate being told of sales and given special offers, which makes them more likely to continue shopping at your store. 4) Create subject lines that convert When it comes to email marketing, writing the perfect subject line is key. If you want to optimize your emails for mobile devices, then your subject lines have to be written just right to ensure your emails are opened. To help you achieve the perfect subject line, remember to keep it short and simple, use specifics, make it sound urgent and important, and don’t use spam words. Mobile users only spend a few seconds skimming email subject lines, so if yours doesn’t stand out to them, your email will be looked over or deleted instead of opened. Asking a question and making a special offer stand out are examples of two good subject lines.

5) Separate your buyers from your prospects These two types of people are very different and should be separated in your email marketing campaigns. Prospects cost you money, while existing buyers make you money. Divide prospects and buyers into their own lists. Buyers have already made a purchase with your business, so you need to nurture that relationship to make sure they keep coming back to spend their money with you. Email them special discounts, exclusive offers or information, or anything else that makes them feel special. 6) Make images look proportionate on a mobile screen If someone opens an email on their mobile device and the image you placed in that email isn’t resized to fit on their screen, then their user experience is horrible and they may not finish reading your email. Another way to make the mobile user experience bad is attaching image files that are too large and take too long to load. No one wants to sit and wait for an image to load. When users are on mobile devices, they expect fast download times. If a download takes too long, they lose interest and move on. To optimize your emails for better mobile user experience, make sure your images are sized to fit a mobile device’s screen. 7) Increase link sizes and call to action buttons Most mobile devices today are touchscreen. But most people’s fingers aren’t dainty and small, so it’s harder to be precise with your finger as the cursor on a mobile device. To help with this matter and to create a better mobile user experience, make your text links and call to action buttons a big enough size for anyone to easily click on. It’s also good to space your links out far enough so no one accidentally clicks on the wrong link because that’s just frustrating. In a 2013 study, 80.3 percent of people said they’d delete an email if it didn’t look good or if they couldn’t properly read it on their mobile device. Don’t be a business that has this high of a percentage of customers or potentials deleting your emails. Follow these email optimization strategies so your email marketing plan works in providing a good mobile user experience, while bringing people to your website and their money into your business.]]>