Planning for mobile e-mail

Luck and Jue (2013) suggest that the number of smart phone internet user will increase to 1.2 billion by 2015. They believe that e-mail marketing is dead, however a revival through mobile e-mail marketing is on the cards. eMailmonday reports that ‘mobile e-mail will account for 15 to 65 per cent of e-mail opens, depending on your target audience, product and e-mail type’.

Luck and Jue (2013) have produced basic guidelines for e-mail planning, stick to the marketing basics! The first consideration is that the email must be engaging, this is probably the most important matter as mobile users will probably be somewhere with lots of distractions. Therefore, higher levels of engagement compared with normal email marketing is necessary. According to Luck and Jue the key the subject hook should be within 35 characters to compensate for email programs that limit the subject line.

Another important aspect is to plan for no images to show up, a lot of programs filter out images to reduces data usage, marketers cannot rely on emails that depend solely on images. The use of font and scalable design is also an important factor. As phone screens are smaller font sizes need to be bigger so people can easily read, it is also recognised that a single column format is best as it reduces horizontal scrolling. The use of scalable containers allows for the email resize and reshape to fit any device appropriately. If this is not possible keeping to a thinnest possible margin is best to eliminate horizontal scrolling.

The use of mobile devices has opened up to allow for touch screens in email. This means that anything clickable in the email should be spaced appropriately to avoid users mis-clicking the wrong button or link. This also means that buttons should be big enough for users to click and that those buttons take users to a mobile friendly landing page. 

Luck and Jue (2013) have come up with a few do's and don'ts to avoid being labeled as spam. 
Do's;
Use both text and html versions of the email with the same content
Include a reply address 
make sure all data is accurate, for example delivery time

Don'ts;
Do not use all caps 
Leave white space in the subject line
Use of g a p p y text 
Using Dear...
Use a large image instead of text

Overall Jue and Luck (2013) highlight the need for making a personal connection in emails and state that quality over quantity is most important in contact lists.

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