Email Marketing Best Practices in a Mobile World Ruth Presslaff President ruth@presslaff.com
Presslaff Interactive Revenue Help publishers build and execute vibrant, engaged email marketing campaigns. Demonstrate how the data you collect is the pathway to reader loyalty and advertiser revenue. Provide the technology and consultation to turn emails and data into dollars.
Agenda: Mobile Trends Terms to Know Mobile Registration Creating Powerful Mobile Emails What IS Different? Checklist
Tipping Point Here or Almost Here Knotice.com
Email #1 Activity on Smartphones Email is the number one most popular activity on a smartphone, 78% check email on their mobile phone. IDC and Facebook Always Connected (2013)
Almost ¼ of every Mobile Hour 23% of every mobile Internet hour is spent in email. If the time spent on the Internet via mobile was distilled into 1 hour, 14 minutes would be spent in email, beating out both social networking (9 minutes) and entertainment (8 minutes) by a significant margin. LiveIntent.com
Mobile. Email. Money.
Mobile. Email. Money. Mobile purchasing decisions are most influenced by Emails from companies (71%) only surpassed by the influence of Friends (87%). Adobe 2013 Digital Publishing Report: Retail Apps & Buying Habits Over 70% of mobile purchasing decisions are influenced by promotional emails. Yesmail Consumer Online Behavior Report: Digital Marketing Strategies (2013)
Mobile Email Design Critical to Success BlueHornet Consumer Views of Email Marketing (2012)
Terms of the Trade Mobile Friendly Responsive Design
Terms Mobile Friendly: Same layout regardless of device (desktop, tablet, smartphone). No more than 600 pixels wide. Phone numbers and email addresses clickable for immediate access. Finger Friendly. Not Mouse Friendly.
Terms Responsive Design: Same email/site for desktop, smartphones and tablets. Coded to display (or respond) based on the device calling it. Relies heavily on CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and has become the standard for sites and emails.
Don t do this: Neither Friendly Nor Responsive
Mobile Friendly: Same Content Works Well Either Device
Ideal: Responsive Design Content Automatically Rearranges Based on Device
Mobile Registration ABCD Responsive Design Pages
Responsive Design Web Pages ipad Rendering
Responsive Design Web Page Smartphone Rendering
Creating Powerful Mobile Emails Hint: Only Moderately Different than Creating Powerful Desktop Emails
How Emails Are Read 51 seconds: The average time people spend reading a mobile 19 Percent: Average amount of an email that s read 35 Percent: Scan mobile e mail, only reading articles of particular interest to them Keep it short Use Catchy headlines Use Bullet points Provide links for more detail Jakob Neilsen
General Best Practices: Subject Line A GOOD subject line: Makes an announcement or shares news Makes the reader curious Creates a sense of urgency Emphasizes the benefit from opening your e-mail. A BAD subject line: Is misleading (and therefore out of compliance with CAN SPAM regulations) USES ALL CAPS Excessively punctuates!!!!
General Best Practices: Subject Line Subject Line still critical component. Mobile Devices have smaller screens Use Shorter Subject Lines. Android truncates at 24 characters and Apple truncates at 31. (mequoda.com)
General Best Practices: Relevancy
General Best Practices: Relevancy Interests Geography Tracked Behavior Contest Participation Survey Participation
General: CAN SPAM regulations Don t use false or misleading header information. Your From, To, Reply-To, and routing information including the originating domain name and email address must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message. Don t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message. Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement. Tell recipients where you re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn t block these opt-out requests. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don t want to receive more messages from you, you can t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
What IS Different? Open/Time Gender
Timing Knotice.com
Timing Movable Ink
Gender Per Live Intent: Performance between the sexes is fairly similar in regards to desktop vs. mobile, Within mobile, women have shown a higher preference for tablets than men
Age: Live Intent
Checklist of Mobile Email Design Things You Can Do NOW
Checklist for Mobile Keep width to 600 pixels or less Reduces necessity of horizontal scrolling Still readable on smartphones smaller screens Avoid dividing space up smaller than 320 pixels wide Concise copy Avoid long paragraphs Break into scannable bites, use bullet points, headlines, etc. Minimum font sizes: body text - 14 px; headlines - 22 px Careful use of large fonts reads differently than in print
Checklist for Mobile Make most of Subject and Pre-header 25 characters goal for subject line. Pre-header: 1 st 50-100 characters of email copy Deal with "fat-finger" syndrome: Minimum 29 44 pixels for clickable areas At least 10 pixel pad allowance between clickable areas Avoid including traditional navigation menu bar: buttons would appear too small to be clickable Pre-header
Checklist for Mobile Images: May be blocked Images are eye-candy. Go bold. Use alternative text* To: Reader From: Paper
Checklist for Mobile Call to Action must be clear Immediately understand what you want Make it obvious where to click To: Reader From: Paper Think Landing Page Drive reader to action on landing page Same ease of use for mobile visitor
Questions? # 2 Ruth Presslaff ruth@presslaff.com 310-792-6070