With a forecast from Forrester Research predicting that 78% of active US email users will view their inboxes via mobile clients by 2017, the question isn’t whether or not to optimize your communication for mobile, but rather how to make it more effective when it arrives. Below are three considerations when approaching email marketing for the mobile landscape.

1. Present a compelling message or offer

   Is your content truly interesting? Or relevant to the customer? It needs to be, otherwise you risk losing that open or click-through, and ending up in the old trash can. This is true with any form of marketing, but with users constantly receiving digital communications, it’s important to optimize your message accordingly. Use a consistent sender address to establish a relationship with the recipient. Start with subject lines that intrigue – and be sure to keep them short. Studies show that shorter subject lines perform better and they’re less likely to get truncated by the mobile email client. Consider pre-headers as an extension of your subject line. And personalize body content wherever possible. Finally, A/B testing and optimizing your segment will help you determine what is resonating with users.

2. Optimize Content Across Devices

   In a recent study by BlueHornet, 69.7% of email users said they immediately delete an email if it does not display correctly on their device – more reason to make sure your message delivers as intended. Make sure content is easily scanned and that CTAs are positioned appropriately. Be judicious when using imagery as part of your message and consider an alternate text version to be sent as well. Depending on the amount and size, images can slow down the deliverability of an email. Also, large images could potentially appear as spam to some filters. Always ensure there’s a balance when using imagery. Most importantly, test your marketing emails across multiple mobile devices, operating systems and email clients.

3. Provide a Consistent Mobile User Experience

   Mobile-optimized email communications are only part of the equation. Connecting users to a seamless experience beyond the “click” is a great way to keep them engaged. If directing a user to an additional web property, be sure that it not only supports your message but also continues down the path of a mobile-optimized experience. This could come in the form of an app, a mobile website, or a website designed responsively to make content mobile-friendly.

Email marketing continues to transition more into the mobile spectrum. Developing a sound mobile strategy now will help you meet the expectations of your customer base, positioning your digital marketing for growth and success going forward.

If you’d like to learn more about optimizing email for mobile, follow us on twitter @trellist , or connect with us via info@trellist.com.

In direct response marketing, traditional logic dictates the more you can customize a message to reflect what you know about that customer, the better the results.

In 1994, Don Peppers and Martha Rodgers promised that the concept of “one-to-one” marketing was the way. However, the pursuit of this theoretical segmentation ideal has never been practical or effectively achieved. Still today, the practical number of executions (or cells) in most direct marketing programs is limited by the law of diminishing returns for all the wrong reasons… except at Trellist.

Many marketing executives accept the idea that as they pursue more precise segmentation, their total costs will increase due to added creative & production time, increased coordination and production hours, and additional QA time (or its converse, the likelihood of costly errors). To this thinking, as incremental production costs increase, there comes a point where incremental yield from more precise customer segmentation is no longer profitable.

Trellist, however, has demonstrated that as you control the creative and production costs by leveraging production technology and deploying a disciplined creative approach, the incremental costs of customer segmentation are significantly lowered (changing the slope of the incremental cost curve). With a very different approach to email development, print and direct mail creative methodology, marketing executives have much greater freedom to personalize offers, creative treatments, and marketing messages, all while reinventing their marketing program strategy with greater personalization. 

By dramatically moving the point in which the incremental costs for customizing direct marketing are equal to the incremental return, Trellist has demonstrated the capability to increase the marketing team’s ability to customize marketing content. As a result, our clients are able to deploy more precise messaging, increase the effectiveness of each campaign and produce higher ROI for their organizations.

At Trellist, we are proving that through integrating marketing and technology, we can toss out the “Law of Diminishing Returns.” This approach offers direct marketers new options that dramatically change traditional assumptions and produce a very different kind of business results.