Improve Your E-Mail Marketing (written July, 2014)

You want to engage your audience when you do email marketing – right? In today’s market place the better way to do it now is to think mobile!

It seems today more than ever before that more people are opening their emails up from a mobile phone or device. That means you need to gear your email marketing towards this crowd or you will be losing more than half your audience when you send emails!

Here are a few ideas to help you improve your email marketing.

Idea #1 – Create your email for the small screen. Use an HTMLS template instead of just HTML because your promotion will look just as good on a smart phone as it does on a tablet or 50 inch computer screen.

Idea #2 – Keep your content short and sweet. Less is truly more in this instance. Since mobile devices are small, your content should be short and sweet so the reader doesn’t have to squint or scroll too much down to read it. Though it may seem difficult to write short and effective copy, once you do it over and over again you’ll get used to it. And it will be well worth it for you!

Idea #3 – The font you use must be easily readable for smaller devices. So a larger than normal font size is important. Use 14 pt. or larger.

Idea #4 – Call to action on web pages can use images with ease. But when creating responsive designs for smaller devices, it’s better to use at least a 42×42 pixel. Remember that these are clickable areas and if they are too small or too close together, you can lose a possible conversion.

Idea #5 – Put your contact info right up front and center. Since mobile devices make it very easy for viewers to call businesses, it’s very important for your contact info to be big, bold and up front, so they can act immediately!

Idea #6 – Rethink your navigation. Typically, navigation on mobile devices is a lot different than regular desktop monitors. So since people do not like to scroll down to view anything on mobile devices, it’s important to have the most critical info in your emails at the top of the screen.

Idea #7 – Keep testing! Since there are so many different mobile devices, it’s important to constantly test the way your emails look on different devices. It’s actually worthwhile to buy a few of the less expensive mobile devices to view firsthand what your actual email will look like. If you don’t want to make that kind of investment, just ask a few of your friends with different devices to view your emails to see how they look.

Optimizing your email marketing certainly will give you a hand up on your competition as well as increasing the amount of sales your emails are generating.

The author of this article is Larry Costello, President of All-American Print & Mail, 2200 Wilson Blvd #102-57, Arlington, VA 22201.