Email open rates on mobile devices are increasing at a whopping rate and now make up 44% of all opens. While an email can look great in the inbox, it can look awful when squeezed into a tiny screen on a mobile phone. Therefore, a one size fits all email design is no longer the best solution. It is now just as important to make sure your email is compatible for tablet or mobile as it is for long standing email providers such as Hotmail or Gmail. You should therefore consider a responsive email design.
Responsive designs automatically alter the layout of your email and offer different styles for different screen sizes, rendering based on pixel size of the screen and making your email look great no matter the device it is opened on. They automatically adjust to the size of the screen using one set of code, meaning you don’t need to create many different templates for different devices, saving you time and money. Responsive emails offer a better experience for your consumer, resulting in a higher conversion rate and an increased ROI.
Responsive email code is based on rules to hide, stack, add or collapse content to optimise usability for different screen sizes. Some recommendations for the design of a reponsive email include a single column design, larger text and bigger buttons which are easy to press with a finger. You can also change the text on your CTA to be more applicable to a mobile audience, for example ‘Purchase from the app store’ rather than linking to a website, if a smaller screen size is detected.
Here are two of my favourite responsive email designs:
Crocs Responsive Design Email
Last Minute Responsive Email Design
As always, it is important to test every aspect of your campaign, including the use of responsive designs. You should at first test sending half your database a normal email template and the other half a responsive template carefully noting the differences in open rate, click through rate and conversion rate before deciding which type of email to use going forward.
