How to Create Mobile Emails that Convert

The screens we gaze into on a daily basis are getting smaller and smaller. Last year, Google’s Android displaced Microsoft Windows as the world’s most popular OS. And users have been spending more time on their mobile devices than their desktops since 2016.

All this adds up to the fact that email is no longer a desktop-focused medium. Mobile users, however, approach email with a different mindset, with limitations in both time and screen size impacting how an email is received.

Fortunately, worries about mobile’s influence on email efficacy are unfounded, as long as you know how to tailor your communications. Below are a few general guidelines.

1. Write emails worth reading.

People don’t just open more emails on mobile, they spend more time reading those emails than those on desktop. Think about it — remember the last time you were eagerly awaiting an email? Maybe you were expecting to hear about a job or were settling a personal matter. If the email arrived while you were on mobile did you hold off reading it until you could see it on desktop? Of course not. You opened and read it in the moment, on the device you were using at the time.

In the same way, a discount offer or news about a new product are welcomed and read by any customer who has already demonstrated interest by signing up for your email list. What’s different from a few years ago is that machine learning makes it easier to target customers with finely-crafted, personalized messages, allowing you to ensure each message is relevant to each recipient.

2. Consider context with your call-to-action.

There was a time when e-commerce was a desktop-focused phenomenon, but today, more than half of visits to shopping sites come via smartphones. Though more conversions still happen on desktop, that’s also changing. Mobile shopping accounted for 34 percent of online purchase revenue last year, according to an estimate from Adobe. By 2020, ‘m-commerce’ could account for as much as 49 percent of online retail sales, according to Javelin.

Marketers need to consider the context in which a customer might receive a mobile email and then imagine actions that will make the most sense for the user in that context. For example, because the user is mobile, they might be physically close to a retail store, a possibility that is less likely from a desktop device, so providing a location-based ‘stores near you’ CTA might be a good option. Click-to-call is another great example of an action that’s more logical on a smartphone than on desktop.

3. Limit obstacles

Filling out forms on desktop is annoying, but on mobile it can be beyond frustrating. When you’re on a mobile device, every tap and swipe matters.

To limit users’ frustration, don’t make them fill out huge forms or hunt around to find what they’re looking for. With your mobile users in mind, consider streamlining the process of obtaining or entering data as much as possible. You could also play to the fact that your customers are likely reading your email on a mobile device, with a playful nudge to take care of the more detailed stuff when they have access to a computer… “Hey, we know this might be a bit tough on your phone – come back to it when you’re at a computer.

4. Be concise

Research from Boomerang determined that the optimal length for an email — the length that elicited the best response rates — was between 50 and 125 words. That’s three or four very short paragraphs, at most.

While many email marketers have been making the case that shorter is better for some time, mobile gives their argument added weight. People checking email on their phones are often killing time, perhaps in the backseat of a cab or waiting in line. Whatever the case, the content is more easily consumed when it’s ‘snackable’ — in other words, designed for short engagements.

5. Make the experience as quick as possible

According to Google, 53 percent of users will abandon your site if it takes longer than three seconds to load. The same holds true for the amount of time it takes your email to load upon opening. But not only that, a CTA that leads to a slow-loading, non-mobile optimized landing page will send your customers right ‘round the bend.

So make sure your emails are designed to open quickly on mobile, for sure, but take care that any page your CTA leads to will load quickly, work properly, and look great on mobile as well.

And speaking of being concise, this post has already clocked in at more than 600 words — or up to 12 times the length of an ideal email. If you’ve read this far, thanks. Especially if you’re reading on your phone.