In part 1 of this series we discovered that almost half of B2B ‘c-suite’ and almost 40% of ‘non c-suite’ executives are already using their smartphone or tablet to research and buy solutions. If you’re like most B2B companies these are key audiences for your business, so it’s imperative that their experience with your brand using their ‘small’ screen is a good one. Given that time and budget constraints make it unfeasible to optimize all of your content for mobile devices, the next couple of posts will examine the places where it makes most sense for you to spend your marketing dollars. Let’s start with email.
Format your emails to fit the 'small' screen
According to Merkle, 43% of people check their email with their mobile device four or more times a day. That’s not necessarily good news for marketers. Urgent emails get read first, others get saved for later and many are deleted without ever being opened. Here are a few tips to maximize the chance that yours don’t fall into the third category:
- HTML versus text –there’s some debate in the design community about whether creating HTML email makes sense for the mobile community, given the small screen size and the fact that in most cases images are blocked by default. Some experts prefer a text only approach for email (see this article from BtoB Magazine’s site for more on this subject).
- Subject and from lines – keep subject lines short (some suggest 15 to 20 characters) and ‘front load’ the most important message. Use a clear from field – usually your company name.
- Width matters – some designers suggest a width of 500 to 600 pixels to make viewing easier on the small screen. If your audience is using an iPhone, experts from Vertical Response suggest a width of 320 pixels.
- Keep it simple – this applies even more in the mobile world. Keep your message short and to the point, have a clear call to action link or button and put this and other key content at the top of the email.
- Images – if you do decide to use images follow these best practices: keep images small in dimension and file size; use ‘alt’ tags to get the gist of your image across when images are blocked; and make sure key content is included in the text of the email.
You can find more mobile email tips in this tutorial from Vertical Response.
In our next installment, we’ll be sharing design tips for Web sites, PDFs, videos and other content. Got any great examples of mobile-optimized email you’ve created? Please share them with us.