How does your email look on iPhone or Android

In 2018, the clear majority of opens you receive on your email campaign are from mobile devices. According to Marketing Land, over 60% of emails were opened on mobile devices in the first quarter of 2018. Want to see for yourself? Look at the Campaign Reports in your ReachMail account. Navigate to the “Reports” tab, then the Campaign Reports. Click on any campaign, and you’ll see something like this:

Fortunately, ReachMail has a tool designed to make sure your message looks good when opened on any popular mobile device. It’s called “Inbox Preview.” Here’s how to use it: go to your Mailings tab and click on the three dots on the far right. Highlight “Generate Inbox Preview” to start the process:

You’ll next get a chance to confirm your choice. You’ll see the nine most popular devices that the preview will run. For more details on how to use Inbox Preview check out our help document here.

Five simple tips to make your email design mobile friendly

Single Column Template: Using a single column helps prevent formatting problems that can cover up important parts of your email. This layout is simpler than many of the more popular templates designed for desktop viewing, but when you consider that someone will be scrolling through your email on a small screen, this makes more sense. In all of this, simplicity is key. Too many fancy features and sections can get very confusing on a phone screen, and you want to make engaging with your email as easy as possible.

Put most important content up-front: Similarly, you’ll want to think about laying out your email, so it flows vertically. That means everything you want them to see right away very close to the top and a logical progression as they scroll through. Like any marketing email, you’ll want something interesting to hook attention early on.

Keep font to less than 13 pixels: On a desktop, this is on the smaller side of font display, but for a phone it’s perfect. Bigger fonts will get cut off and may not display correctly. Plus, if they do, it will just look obnoxious to have words that take up the whole screen and require a lot of scrolling.

Use one call to action button with a minimum size of 44×44 pixels: This is arguably the most important part of any marketing email. This is where you get your recipients to take action, and it’s important that this button be easy to find eye-catching, and clear. If you provide more than one button, it can look spammy, or even be confusing for readers. Even if the buttons all go to the same place, putting in more than one can trigger choice paralysis for readers which is exactly what you want to avoid.

Use very few images: Keeping in line with the theme of simplicity, having only a few images keeps your email from being cluttered and reduces the likelihood of something going wrong and not loading correctly. A single powerful image is much more effective than many less-compelling ones anyway, so stick to as few as you can.