Email readership on mobile devices is growing so fast that soon it will be the predominant platform for email consumption, and mobile email consumption may overtake all other platforms even sooner. We are way beyond just ‘planning for mobile’ – it is now imperative to design your campaigns and landing pages to be easy to view and work well on a mobile device.

Return Path’s Tom Sather, senior director of email research, says:

“Looking at the trend lines of our clients, we’ll probably see mobile overtaking web-mail and desktop by the end June as the preferred platform, but definitely by the end of the year.” As a result, Sather said: “Marketers need to wake up and think about their mobile strategy. More than half of all marketers have no idea if people are reading their email on mobile devices.”  

He goes on to say “A lot of people talk about optimizing email for mobile devices, which is kind of a no-brainer, but a lot of people don’t think beyond the email. If they do click on a link and they come to a landing page, is that optimised for mobile as well? Studies have shown that less than 2 percent of people will revisit an email on their desktop or laptop, so you really only have one chance to make a good first impression.”

 However, Sather cautions against discounting other platforms. “But just because mobile is the rage, don’t forget about desktop email clients such as Outlook, as well as web mail,” he said.
We agree Tom. To back that up, here is our list of the most important mobile email design considerations and best practices:

Make sure you optimise your emails and landing pages for mobile. Email open rates have increased since last year and last quarter, but click-through rates have declined. This is most likely because they are abandoned after consumers open them on mobile devices and the messages are not optimised. With mobile you only have 1 chance to get the recipient to read your email and to click through to landing pages. If you are directing people to your website or landing page and it doesn’t look good or load or operate well on mobile, people will leave – and find another site that does work.

Think about where, when and how people read emails on mobile. In a recent survey, it was discovered 70% of users read emails in bed before going to sleep or first thing before waking up. So be mindful of this in terms of your design, and don’t use bright images which might be hard on the eyes for those reading your emails in the dark or as they are just waking up.

Reduce the template width to fit a smaller screen. We recommend you set the width of your email template to 640 pixels or less. Smartphones have screens between 320 and 480 pixels wide, so if your email is 640 pixels wide it is both suitable for desktop viewing, and is suitable for viewing on smartphones too.

From name and subject line become even more important for mobile. We know the from name is important already – but it becomes even more so due to the fact that the very first thing you see on your mobile, is your from name. So this to me becomes the most important facet of the mobile email. This is closely followed by your subject line. Make sure your subject line is punchy, strong, and we recommend no longer than 35 characters. This is how many characters you see.  

Space is at a premium so make it simple and save on real estate. Use one-line pre-header text. Pre-headers are usually 1-2 lines of HTML text at the very top of the email. They are ideal for hand held devices to highlight an enticing offer, making it the first thing prospects read before they even consider downloading images. Keep key content above the fold. (This will be the top 200 to 250 pixels). This area is prime real estate for the 3 to 5 seconds a prospect is focused on your email message, so it needs to have useful, readable text, or a very clear image. Be mindful to incorporate branding and offer-driven text above the fold.

It doesn’t have to be brevity central… if it’s good enough, it will be saved for later. On a mobile you obviously have less space so eliminate unnecessary content and put the focus on the key parts of the message. However don’t strip everything out – creating mobile friendly emails is a balancing act, where your shorter message should be comfortably able to be viewed, read and actioned on a small screen. Longer messages can always be saved for when subscribers get home and can read them in full on a larger screen. Mobile users will delete any long emails that are ineffective, but they will save your email for later if it’s well designed with great content.

Bigger, Bolder call to actions – think of the thumbs! It is crucial you increase the size and padding of text links and call-to-action buttons throughout your emails. A typical adult finger covers 45 pixels, and it is no accident Apple makes all their app icons 44 x 44 pixels! Make sure your calls-to-action are padded by at least 10 to 15 pixels to avoid frustrating and accidental finger tapping errors.

Because it’s on a smaller screen, you can use larger fonts. This is where we do recommend you use a slightly larger font to keep things easy to read. However still stay with web safe fonts, and use a font size of 12-14 point for body copy and headlines at 20-22 point. Keep in mind that the larger font means you’ll have even less space, so keep your content brief.

Please do download the Jericho Mobile Email Whitepaper here now and share with your colleagues.

There is obviously a plethora of mobile infographics, links, resources, tips and advice everywhere you look however this is really intended as our list of vital mobile email design considerations that we really want you all to know….

If you have any queries please contact us, and remember we have an expert in house design team that you can contact for advice at any time.

New Zealand mobile internet use:

*Smartphones users are in the majority in New Zealand, with more than half of all kiwis using their mobile phone to access the internet, according to government figures.   (In the 12 months up to June 2012)… the number of mobile broadband subscribers rose 34 percent, so there are now over 2.5 million mobile broadband users in New Zealand.

“We’ve seen data usage on our network roughly quadruple over the past two years,” Vodafone’s external communication manager Emma Carter said. “As more and more people move to smartphones – as almost 50 percent of our customers are now doing – they start using the internet on the move for everything from maps to Facebook to researching products and services.”

Two Degrees Mobile, the newest entrant in the mobile phone market, has continued to grab sales from bigger rivals Telecom and Vodafone New Zealand, boosting its market share to 1 million customers, or 21 percent of the country’s mobile market, in August.

Vodafone is still the biggest local carrier with 2.37 million customers.

New Zealand mobile device market share:
See our previous blog posts on market share here: and the long running post which helps you to see changes over time is found here.
NBR updates their post but not for a whole – read the latest they have,  here.

Australia Market Share of mobile smartphone sales :

**This statistic shows the market share of the leading operating systems for smartphones sales in Australia from June 2011 to October 2012. From July to October 2012, Android had a 62.2 percent share of the Australian smartphone market.  Android is far ahead, but has ceded some ground because of the iPhone 5 launch. Apple’s gain has been sharp in Australia. Windows Phone’s performance is flat indicating no impact of the launch of the Lumia 920 or other WP8 devices.

SmartCompany says: Android has claimed a dominant lead in the Australian smartphone market with a market share of 62.2%, with the platform pulling ahead of Apple.  The figures, compiled by ComTech, examined Australian smartphone market share by platform during the quarter ending October 28, 2012.  Read their whole story here.

*Source: Business Desk via Sharechat.co.nz

**You will find more statistics at Statista

When someone receives an email they skim the From Name, and then the Subject Line in quick succession, which makes these two areas the ‘gatekeepers’ for each message.

If you are a marketer relying on email to communicate with your audience you need to get past these ‘gatekeepers’.

Firstly you need a From Name that ticks three boxes: it must be recognised, trusted and relevant to the reader right now.  An email from my mum ticks all three every time.  With a business it’s a little more complex.  Even if I know ‘Air New Zealand’ and I love travelling with them, this year I am on a tight budget and so right now you are not ‘relevant’ to me. I might think ‘I have no intention of being tempted into reading your email offers no matter how good they are, and I will delete every email you send.’

It’s good to bear this in mind when you review your email campaign reporting as there simply will never be 100% of your database read your message – I’m on holiday, the dog died, this report is due – basically life gets in the way.  I suggest a rule of thumb that the ‘top mark’ possible is closer to 75% so if your open rate is 35% then that’s about half of your possible audience – a great result.

From another angle, it’s good to bear this ‘triage’ behaviour pattern in mind when you undertake engagement analysis of your database – Who reads every email? Who has stopped reading?  It’s important to make sure the ‘zombies’ who are effectively dead to your brand are cleaned out on a regular basis for email deliverability, so we do actively encourage this exercise.   But.  Just because I’m not opening your emails right now doesn’t mean I don’t want you to keep sending them.  I may well just be on a tight budget for a few months.  Arrgggh!  Why does email marketing have to be so complicated!

Assuming your email has passed the above gatekeeping/triage process of the From Name, next up your reader is looking to the Subject line for indication of a value exchange that is in his or her favour.  Their time is worth an awful lot to them.  Your email must deliver more value in order for it to be open and read.  And so your subject line needs to hint at that value as clearly and quickly as possible.

To get a Subject Line right, there are many many many possible approaches to take. The subject line is often promoted as a good thing to ‘test’ and see if your readers respond better to a particular set of words, or tone.  The reason testing is good idea is that the answer to the question ‘What works best?’ is almost always ‘It depends’.  I have seen tests show more words work better to get clicks in the email, and I have seen tests show that less words work best.  Similarly I have seen marketers use a set format for every campaign of a similar ‘type’, and I have seen people change the format for every single email they send, to good result.

Focus on clearly describing the value that is within your email, and then make sure you deliver that value in a way that makes sense and is easy and intuitive to action for your reader.  We have written about good subject lines before – read those posts here and an older post about the importance of your From name is here.

Now you are fully equipped to get past the first two hurdles of a successful email campaign, how do you ensure it makes you lots of money?  That’s fodder for the next article or ten.  See you then.

Even though it’s likely you are still focusing on your Christmas ‘recovery’ and easing back to work, it’s never too early to think about your 2013 email marketing program.

For some this year might be about reviewing your budget and allocating more resources towards your email communications program in order to set in place the best of the basics.  If you are already more established and ‘mature’  in your approach to email then you are continually reviewing your email communications program and are evaluating it to see how you can enhance what you’re doing.

Either way if you really want to power up your email marketing, below are some of the biggest shifts and trends at the moment that you should now seriously be thinking about how you could make this work better for you.

1. From mobile optimised to mobile first
Given that most email opens now happen on mobile devices, simply optimising your email message for mobile devices is becoming more of an outdated notion. On the other hand – while optimising designs for mobile is now crucial, don’t forget that context is just as important. And a mobile first approach means that landing pages and your Web site are also designed to convert mobile readers of your email.

2. From dry to juicy
Things have changed in the way customers expect to communicate with companies and what they want from them. Gone is the notion of editing content to within an inch of its life to take out any human presence and get it past the lawyers. It’s now about taking a different approach that involves sending content that educates, informs, engages and entertains. This doesn’t mean you abandon your professional corporate speak for the ‘LOL’-speak, however it’s about balance – customers just want to know they are dealing with humans that care.

3. From 1-1001 to 1-1
Batch and Blasts (where everyone gets everything) should have died out along with the Spice Girls. So it is really time to shift to automating more parts of your email program, where the subscribers themselves determine the frequency and cadence of the emails they receive through their own purchases, check-ins, behaviour and interests. It is those smart cookies that use the data they have to deliver real-time emails with truly dynamic and personal content.

4. From welcome message to boarding program
There is a shift away from firing out a ‘welcome’ message and then dumping subscribers into your main communication feed, to gently warming them up with a series of on-boarding messages that are tailored toward new recipients.

5. From one-off to email series
Did you know cart abandonment follow up emails get the highest engagement rate of all emails? Followed by birthday series emails.  Reports show a three-part birthday or cart-abandonment series always significantly outperform a single email. We have heard of people getting average conversion rates of 22%, 15% and 24% with a three-part cart-abandonment re-marketing series. How much money would it have lost if it had stopped after the first message?

Worth thinking about…. Email or call us if you want to talk strategy and email communications planning for 2013, we are elbow deep into work with many clients already and in the coming months they will be very pleased we did!

If you follow the email marketing industry, you know that engagement is quite the buzzword lately.  But Engagement isn’t new at all. It has been a part of the filtering mix for quite a while. ISPs including Yahoo! (Xtra) Hotmail and Gmail are adding clicks, opens and other measures of user engagement to the long list of other engagement metrics that have been in use for a while. All these metrics try to do the same thing — figure out which messages are truly wanted by subscribers.

ISPs are measuring engagement and using it to decide who gets to the inbox, and who goes to the junk folder. In simple terms, the ISP is basically looking at whether or not your subscribers open, click, and in general, “interact” with you. If you send an email that mistakenly goes to the junk folder, then the subscriber moves it back out, you scored some engagement points. If your subscriber clicks your links or hits “reply” to send you a message, you get some engagement points.

Returnpath’s George Bilbrey says to senders:

“Treat inactive subscribers differently: This is probably the biggest change that most marketers need to think about. Mailing to a lot of inactive accounts may actually make your reputation look worse at some ISPs. Segment out inactive users and run a win-back campaign. If you cannot win back these subscribers, you may simply want to stop mailing them altogether.”

Over at Clickz, Jeanne Jennings had this to say about inactive members of your list:

“If these folks really aren’t that into you, they may take the next step and report you as spam. It’s like that shunned suitor who just won’t go away; eventually the victim will consider him a stalker and get a restraining order. Keeping inactive names on your list can open you up to blacklisting and deliverability issues.”

There is an art to deciding who is engaged and who is not.  This will depend on your buying cycle and the types of emails you send. It is good to use an email expert to help you make a matrix for your own business but there are some things you can consider:

Do you have strong calls to action in your emails – so that there is something to click?

Do you have a genuinely relevant and  interesting email stream, sent at least bi-monthly (6 per year)?

If you have a frequent email (weekly or more) do you allow people to control the frequency and type of emails they get using a Preference Centre?

• From time to time you should dissect your email list to identify who have never opened, clicked or bought something from you. We call them ‘zombies’.  They bring all your metrics down, they impact your engagement measures and they don’t pay their way.  Try to get them to wake up – or kill them off.
• Next look for who is in a coma – used to engage and now don’t.  Talk to them differently too.
• Who is on their way out?
• Who are you best responders?  Make them feel special, use them to spread your word, and keep up the good work!

There is much to this and a good agency can help you do this and come out the other side with a more profitable program.

And worst case is you get to kill a few zombies!

When the DMA and the EEC sent an email to talk about their upcoming conference this morning we were a little taken aback with what we received.

We might be all the way down here in New Zealand but after 12 years we know our way around email design best practice… and this wasn’t that.

Turns out there was some kind of error somewhere, so we thought we’d try to help and jump in and make it look a bit more like email marketers would expect to see from their guiding lights.

Check out the before and after shots below (you need to click to enlarge them to full size) and please let us know what you think in the comments below or via @JerichoCrew on Twitter:

BEFORE:

Click the image to see the full version

Overall, the original design was quite disorganised. The main focus in terms of imagery seemed to be around the location of the conference, rather than the content. And we’re unsure what re-purposing the classic ‘Got Milk?’ advertising campaign adds to the communication.

The images used are quite rough and, in places, have been stretched disproportionately to fit a gap. The headshots used for the speakers are of varying sizes (which again makes the design look rough/messy) and are laid-out in a way that means they aren’t associated with their corresponding text (profiles on the left).

The various logos aren’t given space, making the composition quite cramped. The main call-to-action for this communication should be to register, but although it features at the top of the email, it doesn’t really stand out and is given no more prominence than the other calls-to-action.

AFTER:

Click the image to see the full version

We looked to simplify the layout and make it easier to follow. The conference name and date are given prominence, with supporting imagery which ties in with the content of the event, rather than the location.

We used a short blurb to explain what the event was about, followed by the call-to-action, in orange, so that it stands out. We placed the speakers’ images with their profiles and gave their logos space to breathe. The speaker section is followed by the same call-to-action. The reason for this, is that we don’t want recipients to have to scroll back to the top to take action – we’re making it easy for them to do what we want them to.

Our secondary calls-to-action (Join EEC and Join DMA) then follow this and are treated in a way that they are still obviously clickable, but they don’t detract from our primary CTA.

What do you think?  We hope they use it, or at least let us have another try at a design they will use.  Watch this space.

When a recipient marks your email as ‘junk’ or ‘spam’ in their inbox, a good ESP (email service provider) will receive that notification via the feedback loop  set up with the ISP.

This will unsubscribe the person so you do not send them any emails again, which is a best practice action and helps preserve your reputation as a good email marketer.

However, what happens when your customer wants to get BACK on your email list?  They have marked the email as spam so it will go straight to the junk folder each time.  Unless they reverse the action and mark it as ‘not spam’ or ‘not junk’.

If you need to pass these instructions on, you can send this page by clicking the title ‘Not Junk’ How to get your email back to someone who has marked it as spam  above, and sending the link to the page.

Here is what they need to do:

1. Go to the Junk/Spam folder of the email client
2. Tick the email(s) you wish to un-junk or un-spam
3. Click ‘Not Spam’ or ‘Not Junk’ as indicated in the screenshots below.

GMAIL

HOTMAIL

YAHOO

Updated 2 May 2013

Apple smartphones are on the decline while Samsung’s star is burning brighter, but the iPhone and iPad manufacturer is still leaps and bounds ahead of competitors in New Zealand, according to mobile ad network InMobi. See the infographic here.

Updated Feb 22 2013.

Mobile continues to take over the world and many of us would rather leave the dog, Passport, wallet or hubby at home than our phone.

What proportion of your customers are interacting with your website using a mobile device?

We’ve decided to share the Trade Me browser statistics to this blog, providing a very handy resource for kiwi web and marketing teams who are able to validate their own observations on browser trends in New Zealand. TradeMe have promised to update these every three months.

UPDATE: In 18 months TradeMe website visits on mobile devices grew from less than 10% in July 2011 to 35% today according to their new report – read article here.

Click here to read their mobile and browser use facts

Key points they make:

• iOS share holds steady at about 50%
• Android continues on its steady rise
• The proportion of total site visits that are from a mobile device is over 25% and is growing – that’s all phones & tablets.  We are doing a lot of TradeMe on our lap on the iPad as we watch telly i think.  (N.B. This stat on TradeMe was shared in person from TradeMe at a recent NZ conference I attended, as at October 2012, and is not in the site stats linked here.)

Remember our earlier and ongoing post regarding smartphone use in New Zealand?  Many searches come via queries on that post on mobile marketshare in New Zealand so we will update that too as we have done for well over a year now.

The three pillars of commercial email law in Australia and New Zealand are the same in both countries – have consent, identify yourself, and have a functioning and actioned unsubscribe facility.

This week the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has issued Tiger Airways (a Singapore Airlines backed operator) with an $110,000 infringement notice — for failing to unsubscribe customers from marketing emails.  Tiger must now launch a program of audits, reviews, training and process to improve their email practices.

This follows similar action and outcome last year when Virgin Blue was fined for having an unsubscribe link that malfunctioned over a relatively short period of time.

‘This is one of a number of investigations in which the ACMA has found businesses have allowed faulty unsubscribe facilities to continue, in spite of repeated customer complaints,’ said ACMA Deputy Chairman Richard Bean.

‘This action is another reminder to businesses that they should pay attention to what their customers are saying, test their email unsubscribe facilities regularly, and not simply set and forget them. Tiger has now committed to ensuring its unsubscribe facilities are functional and effective.

‘Marketing to customers who have unsubscribed is not only against the law, it causes consumer frustration and that ultimately damages a business’s reputation,’ he added.

The ACMA highlights that marketing to recipients who do not want to receive your emails is not a successful business strategy.  If any of your email recipients are in Australia then it’s probably a great idea to sign up for the ACMA’s emarketing blog.

Action for commercial email breaches in New Zealand is detailed on the website of the Department of Internal Affairs, who manage enforcement of NZ’s UEM Act.

If you have any questions regarding the best practice management of your emarketing databases and mobile and email marketing programs, feel free to post them here and we will answer them here too – or if you prefer, email roanne@jericho.co.nz

Most organisations don’t have the resources in-house to entirely manage the dynamic complexities of email marketing. These marketers will outsource their email to professional email service providers that can deliver an on-demand, easy-to-use email solution to communicate to customers individually with relevant, trackable emails while staying compliant with current regulations.

Considering how important email marketing is in driving revenue in most organisations, it is usually chronically under resourced.

Increasingly marketers prefer to work with experts to help turn their brand strategy into an e-marketing plan. Email is also a peerless tactical tool for marketers with real-life budgets and few options for fast turnaround targeted comms.

A great e-marketing plan allows for calendar planning, resource and budget allocation, whilst leaving room for opportunities as they present themselves. Quick-witted marketers with an e-marketing Partner can target offers and info using demographic and behavioral info collected from every campaign. Relevant and targeted marketing will put distance between their competitors.

These questions are some of the ones that come from an article published in Clickz: they are a good place to start when considering outsourcing:

• Do we have people on staff who can create strategic email programs that drive results, improve customer relationships, and integrate with other marketing/communications efforts?
• Can we access industry-specific and vertical-market-specific benchmarks?
• Do we have a process to set our own benchmarks?
• Do we have email-specific design and copy capabilities?
• Do we have strong knowledge of the complexities involved with coding email or how creative renders across ISPs and Web-based email providers?
• Do we have project managers and analysts with experience in the email channel who can set up, execute, and analyse our email initiatives, from start to finish?
• Can our email platform assemble, deliver, and track high volumes of email in proper formats? Can we tap into our other databases and automate email communications?
• Does our reporting tool provide the information we need?
• Who supports the email system, and how?
• What’s the process for resolving issues arising from our email communication efforts: data quality, bounce backs, delivery, replies, customer questions, and so on?
• How easily can the technology adapt to changing delivery requirements from ISPs and Web-based email providers?
• How does the current system optimise delivery?
• Is there support for multiple sends for soft bounces?
• Can these be controlled by set parameters?

The list of tasks that we take care of is much much longer than this.  There is simply no way that a non-specialist agency can be an expert at the whole lot, and even less likely your own over worked and multi-tasking team could.

If you’d like to chat through any areas you think you might be lacking, we can offer a friendly ear and the most experienced team in the region.

Opportunity is very strong for high quality considered email marketing programs.  We’d love to help you stand out more whether you are a current client or a future one!