5 Essential Tips For Responsive Email

Most marketers accept fully that their websites need to be responsive. responsive email is another essential tool. It’s pretty obvious that if more people are viewing sites on their phones then there needs to be consideration made when designing and building to accommodate this.

So the latest trend is making email responsive, and that’s not quite so easy. Admittedly you can purchase some beautiful ready made templates but as with anything cheap, expect issues!

1. Do you need responsive email?

In the interests of keeping costs minimal, and with today’s customer preference automation, you may find it simpler to bias your email template to mobile, or to desk top, perhaps even have two versions. Responsive emails are tricky to code and less robust in execution than those optimised specifically for particular devices.

2. How to decide how much you need responsive email?

Although many people carry multiple devices, you’ll find they may use different ones for different actions. Eg a short email from a customer may be read, replied to and resolved via mobile yet information heavy messages may be read and responded to more often on tablet or desktop/laptop.

3. The law of diminishing returns plays a huge role.

Having established which devices your subscribers are using and whether responsive is entirely necessary, there’s another issue to consider. Mobile and tablet, unlike desk and laptop, have huge variety in screen size and resolution. You could spend weeks perfecting your design to look on point on every single device BUT if 90+% of your subscribers are iPhone and Samsung mobile users, you must not expect the extra effort of optimising for another screen resolution to pay you huge returns. It simply won’t happen.

4. Content over design.

The most effective emails have 2 simple principles.
A. Brilliant subject lines
B. Relevant content
The truth is that design is a tertiary consideration because without A, subscribers won’t even open it and without B, it’s heading for the trash can. Also, you should really consider the amount of ugly sites and landing pages you’ve viewed, read and gleaned information from. Design without function is in our opinion criminal.

5. Know your place.

Although it’s brilliant to aspire to better things and to want the best, it’s easy to forget sometimes that the best normally has a budget to suit. If you’re looking at someone else’s template(s) and wanting the same, you should first consider how much budget the company in question has applied to their campaigns and also how many people they are sending them out to. You’re never going to get a rolex on a casio budget unless there’s something seriously wrong with it.
Concentrate on the 4 tips above and keep this one in mind.

Your top take aways are these:

1. Good is good enough
2. Budget needs to be reflective of return

By Ryan Mullins