Email Marketing Best Practices: Design for the Majority, not the Mobile Minority
Email Marketing Best Practices: Design for the Majority
A few days ago, we posted a blog on not letting creative rule as an email marketing best practice. Later that same day, the design team whose template I questioned got a chance to defend themselves and their narrow template.
The newsletter was designed for mobile, they said, hence the narrow format. Coming from the standpoint of email marketing best practices like I always do, I challenge this design team on three fronts.
First off, what percentage of the audience is viewing the newsletter on mobile devices? If the majority of email recipients are getting this on a laptop or desktop, then why design for only a small percentage of the audience, sacrificing the possible opens and click throughs of the bigger audience? If you’re not sure, you can ask us to find out who’s opening your email with which device! Getting caught up in the new, but not the tried-and-true, definitely violates email marketing best practices.
Second, what percentage is acting on the newsletter on mobile devices? Just because people might take a cursory look at an email on a mobile device doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll act on it. If acting on an email requires something like entering data, then they will likely do so when they are in front of their PCs. Yes, plenty of people have iPhones and other touch screen PDAs…but not everyone! If you design to the minority, you frustrate the majority.
Third, what is your goal? Is it getting people to act on the newsletter? Or is it to satisfy your aesthetic requirements? If it’s the former, and it should be, then I say, rise to the challenge as a designer. Rather than cram the square peg into the round hole, make it work. Don’t make the email recipient suffer because you put it in a narrow format. Make the narrow formats serve the reader. Maybe put the big photo at the bottom rather than let it cause the blockage it’s currently causing. Find a way to put the user first, not the design first. That is your email marketing best practice.
If this newsletter really has to work on a mobile device above all, and if our biggest concern is click throughs, then maybe the design team needs to lose the focus on branding and imagery, and reduce the “newsletter” to the three links/headlines:
• Enter the contest
• Download the new sales tool
• See new listings
Include a small logo and the corporate brand colors, and voila! Your newsletter. Designed for mobile, ease of use and therefore click throughs. Period.
