6 things to ask your ESP about mobile email today
At this moment statistics show that Mobile Email is booming. Users are opening commercial emails on their iphone, blackberry, android, etc. Now is the time to step in and make sure you aren’t leaving conversions on the table.
Plan a call with your (future) ESP and ask them the following questions about their mobile email features.
Show the analytics and mobile performance
Number one thing is monitoring your performance. Today Mobile email can account for 15 to 65% of email opens. How big is the Mobile Email reach for your audience? And who is opening your emails on mobile? Most Email tools show a pie diagram per browser, but can they tell you the clickthrough rate on mobile emails? and more importantly the conversion? Knowing the size of your recipient group and their performance on mobile is a requirement. Ask your ESP for these statistics.
Include mobile email rendering
80% of users finds reading email on a mobile phone more difficult than on a PC. That is not only because of the smaller screen, but because these emails aren’t optimized for mobile yet. Some ESPs have included an email rendering feature, like for instance Litmus. This will show the emailing in different browsers, displaying a picture of the email as rendered on a mobile device.
Automatic mobile image optimization
Because of reduced bandwidth and phone reception it takes longer to load an email on your mobile. Increased loading times decreases response and offer a worse user experience. Some phones will also cut off an email if it passes a certain filesize or are very long. This means that your images should be smaller when loaded on a mobile. Will the ESP automatically present a smaller version of the images for mobile viewers? Ask it today, especially if your emails are image heavy.
The sales funnel, the pages and the conversion
Email service providers often host certain webpages. Like landingpages, surveys, a preference center or simple sign up page. On a smartphone zooming, typing and scrolling should be minimized. Let alone broken forms or unusable navigation. Creating a different version of these pages (or one adaptive one) will allow to get the most out of the mobile use. So ask your ESP for alternative mobile versions of the hosted pages.
The use of @media queries
With a part of code called @media query you can optimize how your email looks on certain phones. Set width, but also hide or show certain parts of your email. Especially for the not-so-technical users it is good to ask the ESP in what way they can easily get these pieces of code and content into their emails.
The mobile roadmap and strategy
Most ESPs will not answer all questions above with Yes. Mobile email has just begun to be this popular and most Email tools haven’t fully adapted their functionality for it yet. And that is ok. All the features described here are possible to realize with workarounds. But be sure that your ESP has these features for mobile email on the roadmap. If you are really serious about mobile email, ask your ESP how you can get the most out of your mobile email strategy and that encompasses more than sending the right emails for mobile use.
