There's a trend out there called "Responsive Design", which means creating a single HTML layout that adapts to display effectively for both mobile and desktop. This is of course different than creating a desktop and a separate mobile layout. Here is a good whitepaper on how to do Responsive Design for email. There are some good CSS techniques in here: http://www.communicatorcorp.com/doc...he-responsive-email-design-guide.pdf?sfvrsn=2 Hope you find it useful and I'm curious how everyone else is handling mobile users.
They talk about "Responsive Design" and fail to discuss any specific features of different devices / user agents? Fail.
Great whitepaper !!! thanks reddorado. I've already seen some newsletters I received are using single column. But some of the guys here are using text creatives which can change the width automatically, so it would not be a big problem.
Text seems pretty easy or html rich text that is. You simply need a flexible grid. However, I don't think you're going to get complex creatives to resize like a responsive web theme without some extensive CSS. Interestingly, if you could break your creative up and still have it work, it could flow down into one column. A "standard" for smartphones is 320px wide (according to IAB or 300px for some advertisers). My Samasung Galaxy is 720px wide so it will accommodate most creatives. However, one thing to try would be using a simple style: img {max-width: 100%;} I have used this on Wordpress and it actually does the trick. Maybe I'll give it a shot in an email tonight
Ok, so I was just testing my theory up there... I added img {max-width: 100%;} To a single image creative and voila, it works at least in a few places I tried it. I'm mostly hitting GI but 24% of my clicks happen on mobile devices so this is good to know. I'm going to mail this tomorrow and see if it converts any different. HOWEVER - you have to realize that most of the creatives have text that is not meant to be seen through a microscope. So TEST this before launching a bunch of creatives that will be unreadable on the small phone screens.
Following up on my test of the shrinking image... First off I don't really have the capability to split test which would have been a much better approach. Again, I added this to the img tag style="max-width: 100%;" on two email creatives that were single image. I had to catch myself after adding img {max-width: 100%;} as it shrank one of my unsub images to unreadable and didn't want to get in trouble. Result? No difference at all in clicks that I can tell with out a real side by side split test. But comparing with past results, I got similar clicks with the resizing image creative as I have without. Could be a Friday fluke and mailing on Monday would have made a bigger difference (Fridays seem slow to me in general). Anyone else going to try this? Especially if you have split test capability it could help out with this question of whether mobile creative design makes a significant difference. And finally, as stated above, maybe using smaller images with bigger text really is the way to make mobile better. Or is rich text a better alternative altogether for mobile?
I have to admit, I haven't really given too much thought into catering to mobile users, but my off the cuff solution is use rich text. Copy is king... grab attention, draw interest, strong call to action. Can't go wrong with this ever.
With an ever growing # of recipients opening email with mobile devices - this SHOULDN'T be ignored it you intend on squeezing every bit of $ out of your drops as you can. For those interested - I have a solution and can make an intro for you. PM ME <---------------- :240:
