Mobile compatible marketing

Mobile compatible marketing -ABC guide

Mobile compatible marketing – ‘going mobile’ or being ‘mobile compatible’ is one of the most current topics in digital marketing. Customers often ask us to factor this in to our solutions and it is for all the right reasons.

This simple ABC gives you an overview of the main considerations that affect moving your communications into mobile territory

A – relevance

You should use the analytical information available to you to decide just how important mobile compatible marketing is. Often when we look at analytics for our clients, the results aren’t what our customers expect. This isn’t solely specific to the use of mobile either. It is surprising how many organisations still don’t use analytics to evaluate their online and digital marketing investments. It’s a free service and helps you make informed decisions about developing your online and email strategies.
Keep your choices in perspective.

B – design

The whole point of mobile compatible marketing is useability. Responsive websites and email work on the principle that on a smaller screen (than a desktop) they look different. This may mean bigger and fewer buttons, larger images and simplified navigation.
The general rule of thumb for us is – the rule of thumb. If a user has to use any more than their thumb to navigate your media, it has failed. If, however you can successfully navigate your media with the use of a single thumb, the design is ticking the first part of the ‘designed for mobile’ criteria. There are other considerations too, including colour choices, font sizes.
The primary focus is the rule of thumb.

C – investment

Going mobile doesn’t need to cost a fortune and you are able to adapt existing collateral relatively easy. Brand new collateral is even easier to achieve the cross over with many templates and themes being responsive out of the box. These form a strong set of foundations to edit and tweak to make them suit your needs exactly.
In terms of budgeting, you will need to allow additional resource for design and programming but its not something you need to do all at once. If you follow the advice in A and B you’ll find that your budget will stretch and accommodate a number of mobile optimised solutions without causing any major upsets.

In conclusion, moving to mobile compatible marketing is as easy as it is effective.

If you need help taking your collateral to mobile readiness, there’s plenty of help at hand.

By Ryan Mullins

Email marketing guide for novices

Email Marketing Guide

Email marketing is probably the most common form of marketing. Marketers in large companies, small companies and everything in between use email marketing. Email marketing crosses all sectors and is used for all sorts of communication. This Email marketing guide gives you an insight.

Why is email marketing so popular?

Which email platform should you choose?

In truth, you’ve likely already got a system in place. The first thing to do is make sure you’re utilising it to it’s full potential. The discipline of regular email marketing is something marketing teams must be well versed in. You should only consider changing what you’re already using if you’ve identified shortcomings. If you have, are they hindering results?

With so many variables what do you need to get right with email marketing? A point hotly debated by many, we at renew use an evidence-based approach as our standard.

Data

The number 1 critical factor with email marketing is data. The quality of your data determines the scope of your success. As such some sectors achieve great success, while others continue to struggle.

Subject line

Millions of emails don’t get past the subject line and go straight to the trash can. Your subject line is the first part of your email marketing that’s easy to test. It’s also easy to determine what works.

Responsiveness

Does your email marketing work on a mobile phone?

A huge proportion of email marketing is viewed on mobile. If you haven’t thought of your target audience and user, you risk the trash can. Why risk recipients unsubscribing by sending emails they can’t view on all devices.

Content

As with websites, is the content of your email focused on the recipient? First step is forget what you want to say and consider what the recipient wants to read. The more you bring content round in line with this, the greater your successes are likely to be.

Call to action

What should someone do upon reading your email? What action do you want them to take? What’s in it for the recipient? Your call to action needs to be obvious and direct. Make it easy for your recipients.

By using good data, a subject line that will grab the right kind of attention. A format that can be easily read, content that they’ll want and a clear call to action. The basic formula for successful email marketing.

At Renew Marketing, email marketing delivered for clients takes all this into account..

Our email marketing clients contact us because they want better results from their marketing.

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5 essential tips for responsive email.

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