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We know that Smartphone use is on the rise and with it comes more people reading emails on their mobile. Market research firm Nielsen condensed all time spent on the mobile internet into one hour and found nearly half of it was spent on email.  This is a very telling statistic because it goes beyond corporate, Blackberry-centric, email use to include consumers accessing Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail via their devices.

That’s important as Blackberries, despite their generally justified status as a workplace productivity hero, are hopeless at handling the sort of HTML emails that marketers deploy. Images are off, links are exposed and the whole point of creating email eye-candy is defeated. I’m confident this will be sorted out shortly but it’s the current reality. And it’s one that has driven the existing mobile email paradigm.

The Current State of Mobile Email

Marketers that do created ‘mobile friendly’ versions of their emails (and, if we’re being candid, most still don’t) typically take the following approach: In the pre-header of the email there’s a link saying something like ‘On a mobile device? Click here’. Clicking on that link will do one of two things – take the recipient to a text only version or take them to a mobile web page recreating the richer HTML experience. The latter is clearly more favourable from a branding + presentation POV.

iPhones and Android devices do a much better job handling HTML emails. Images are displayed, for starters. But email design is web-centric.  Multi-column emails are common and with mobile’s smaller screen sizes lead to tiresome side to side scrolling. It’s a cumbersome reading experience.

According to the PEW Internet & American Life Project, 34% of all cell phone owners have sent or received an email on their device. This number is slightly higher than the percentage of cell phone owners that have Smartphones but is conclusive enough to confidently say, at a minimum, “Smartphone users = mobile email user.”

With Smartphone penetration set to overtake feature phones in the next year or two and only continue upward, the implication should be clear: The approach to email marketing needs to evolve to account for changing consumer consumption patterns and expectations.

Your emails are being viewed on devices you haven’t designed and tested for and in contexts than a web-centric email approach simply doesn’t account for leading to lost opportunities to capture interest.

Making Email Work for the Mobile Consumer

To make your email marketing programs work harder and extract more value out of each interaction with a mobile consumer, there are three dimensions to address: Design, Content, and Destinations.

1. Design

Consider a design template that’s if not mobile-first, than at least mobile-sensitive. Employ a single column layout consistent with mobile screen dimensions to remove unnecessary pinching, zooming and scrolling and to focus reader attention.  A vertical scroll motion allows for a more natural email reading experience, especially on a mobile device.

Think about larger fonts, bigger call to action button, and more minimalist colour palettes with high contrast between design elements. Your design should make it extremely easy for recipients to differentiate content elements and provide intuitive, obvious action elements that account for a user who will be grazing information rather than reading deeply.

I’d also recommend keeping a text only or mobile web optimized version linked from the pre-header. Many Blackberry users will still need this and it’s good practice to be inclusive of all customers in your design (that’s why you’re looking at a mobile-centric design in the first place, after all).

2. Content

Mobile email readers will be looking for focussed, attention grabbing content.  Consumption will most likely happen during brief moments of downtime.

Combine on-the-go relevance with actionable information with a very sharp editing pencil. Clear but attention grabbing calls to action are at an even greater premium in a mobile context.   This may involve rethinking your content organization as the mobile consumer is best served by information that satisfies moments of inspiration or need vs. contemplation.  The best advice is “don’t overdo it”. Information overload will lead to session abandonment as quickly as a poorly designed email. Brevity and clarity will show you’re sensitive to demands on a recipient’s time and attention.

There’s a lot to be gained from allowing recipients to specify ‘web’ or ‘mobile’ versions as well. Knowledge of how they’ll be viewing your emails can give you a glimpse into how content should be prioritized.

3. Destinations

This is the most important piece. There is no point optimizing design and content for mobile consumption if someone clicks on a link (that’s what you likely want them to do, right?) only to end up on a desktop web experience. All your hard work will be lost.

Building your mobile web destination involves the same content and design sensibilities you’ve applied to your emails.  There’s a lot to be said on this topic and I outlined a foundational lens in a previous post, “Making the Mobile Web a Friendlier Place”. [Stay tuned for a follow up piece on content approaches to your mobile web presence...]

Once you’ve locked down a mobile friendly design, content and destination approach, there are a couple other considerations that can impact your open and engagement rates:

• Send times: Mobile email consumption is more likely going to be in snatched moments of downtime or media multi-tasking. Consider when those are going to be for your customer. Better yet, allow customers to state when they would like to receive your emails.
• Cross-channel opt-ins: Mobile email can be a great way to nurture customers into mobile CRM extensions. Provide mechanisms for users to opt-in to SMS programming. Enable coupon redemption by having device ‘show and save’ or ‘show and scan’ capabilities. Push customers to your mobile apps or other content downloads such as videos or wallpapers.

Now, rather than being a ‘blinders on’ promoter of mobile, I’m realistic in that not all marketers need a mobile friendly email program. You may be able to survive without it depending on your audience demographics. Teen and Older demographics are probably not a mobile email/Smartphone sweet spot. But if your customer base includes urban consumers, 18-45, there’s a good chance you have a growing segment that will expect a tailored, even optimized, experience no matter when or how they happen to view your emails.

Possibly Related Posts:

• 5 Steps To Address Mobile Customer Fragmentation
• Recent @JCDunn Work Blog Posts
• Brother, Can you spare a text?
• Earning Share of Mobile

In the past month or so, I’ve been contributing content to the newly launched Digital Cement blog – The DC Round Table.

The blog is the work of our demand generation team and the subject matter focus is SEO/SEM, social media and mobile. I’m contributing the latter…surprise!

I’ve four posts up there that you might find interesting:

1. Ready, Set, Go! A DC Mobile Kickoff

In this post, I outline the Digital Cement mobile practice, our philosophy, a bit on the service offering and some questions we use to frame all mobile marketing discussion.

2.  Does Your SEM Strategy Include Mobile?

This post talks about a stat Google released about the connection between mobile search queries and location. I’ve added some content and outline two important distinctions between web and mobile search. Nothing ground-breaking, but some hopefully useful ‘get -started’ stuff.

3.  Mobile Marketing: Toronto Public Health and SMS Success

Here I look at a recently launched program aimed at helping youth discuss sexual health issues and providing discreet ways to access sexual health resources.  I share some the program experience and discuss the reasons why I feel this is, strategically and tactically, a very solid program. Hint: It’s got something to do with how much teens text.

4. Canadians, SMS and Sore Thumbs

The CWTA has released numbers for the volume of text messages sent by Canadians. They show impressive growth in both peer to peer and short code messaging and I offer some brief comments on considerations for SMS as a customer acquisition and CRM tool.

Hopefully something catches your eye.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Four Mobile Web Experiences You Can Offer Customers
• The 3 Dimensions Of Effective Mobile Email
• Launch and Learn – Driving Campaign Success with In-Flight Optimization
• 5 Steps To Address Mobile Customer Fragmentation
• Mobile + The New Direct White paper

If part of the promise of mobile is the ability to take advantage of consumer sentiment and intent at a given time and place, then mobile should be a powerful tool for the charitable and not-for-profit sector. When you are dependant on the generosity of the public for your survival, I would imagine you’d want to make the donation process as convenient and simple as possible.

And nothing, I would argue, is more convenient and simple as sending a text message and having a small donation tacked onto your monthly cell phone bill.  Agreed?

Well rejoice.

Canadians can now do just this thanks to a just-announced partnership between the CWTA and the Mobile Giving Foundation. As of this moment, there’s only a handful of approved charities (Plan Canada, Jays Care Foundation, Best Buddies and the Children’s Wish Foundation) but expect that to rise.

Key for the success of the initiative, 100% of all donations go the charities themselves and you still get a tax donation receipt.

On the surface, this is geared towards increasing charitable donations among younger consumers who are also the heaviest texters. But text messaging has become such a common activity that it should really appeal to anyone.

A few other thoughts:

• The best use case for this is for micro-donations (say $5-10) at events or via street team solicitation.
• Charities should also be using this opportunity to build their mobile database by getting opt-ins for future communication. If they aren’t able to under this program, it should be urgently considered.
• Extend the experience by building out simple mobile websites where you can futher education around how donations are being used. You never know how that might drive up donation levels.
• Suspicion of carriers is high, so really sell the 100% donation and tax receipt.

I can’t emphasize enough the opportunity this provides to create a sustained dialogue via the mobile channel.

You’ve qualified a consumer’s interest by their very act of donating. By securing an opt-in, you can now provide updates on how the money is being used (simple SMS updates or use the SMS to push to a mobile site housing picture or video updates), new fundraising events and initiatives (why not mobile ticketing?), or even  subsequent donation calls to action.

I imagine the solicitation of future donations might be controlled and there should be guidelines around the frequency and relevance of communication. But properly designed, you can manage consumer preferences and ensure a high degree of relevance. Do that, and you’ve got a powerful new direct response channel.

So…would you spare a text?

Possibly Related Posts:

• The 3 Dimensions Of Effective Mobile Email
• Managing Your Mobile Marketing Strategy: Introducing the Mobile Maturity Diagnostic.
• Two Words For The Mobile Future
• 3 Mobile Marketing Nuts For Brands to Crack
• Frictionless Mobile Marketing

(Note: I’ve scripted this post to help work through some of my initial thoughts on the role mobile can play in relationship marketing.)

If one of main factors in building a sustained and economically productive relationship with your customers is the ability to earn their trust, then the mobile channel offers a key gateway for both initiating and growing that relationship.

Mobile is a permission marketing channel. The consumer must initiate a relationship with you by actively interacting with you through a promotional vehicle  (responding to an SMS call to action, downloading an application, clicking on a mobile ad, visiting a mobile site, etc…) or by providing some other sort of explicit consent (i.e. providing their mobile # and designating the mobile as a preferred channel through a web-form). So, with mobile, the pull comes before the push.

The power of the permission is also the power of the personal.  Mobile’s are unique to an individual. They are the most direct media channel to a consumer driven by the relatively high costs of ownership and the variety of communication options they provide. Other characteristics also highlight mobile’s appeal as a relationship marketing tool: mobile’s are always on, always with. You cannot say this of any other medium.

If you’ve managed to get a consumer to engage with you via their mobile, if you don’t respect the personal and the permission you do so at your cost. You can lose trust in a heartbeat.

Here’s some of the implications of these characteristics for relationship marketing:

Always Personal:

• Bridges transaction marketing and relationship marketing
• Powerful platform for peer-to-peer referrals
• A premium must be placed on engineering a consumer-friendly value exchange
• Data collected in ‘listening’ programming has a deep connection to consumer interests

Always On/Always With:

• Mobile calls to action integrated into media can be a powerful acquisition tactic, especially if your promotion/value exchange capitalizes on consumer downtime or contextual relevance.
• Contextual relevance provides opportunities for stimulating intent to purchase. You can give the consumer what they want/need, when they want it.

Sample Mobile Tactics:

SMS:

• For acquisition via media tie-ins (database opt-ins, providing initial rewards and spurring push to web)
• Rewarding via points, coupons, tickets. I’d include the use of QR codes here but you can easily do couponing through PINs and barcodes
• Creating alert services based around product attributes or lifestyle associations

Mobile Internet:

• Customer acquisition. For example, an automotive marketer could use a mobile site to help customers book test drives or get brochures mailed out to them
• Providing location based value such as finders, product comparison/recommendation services
• Providing supplemental brand and product information that might influence decisions at point of purchase.
• Generating referrals using SMS or email or as a coupon delivery platform

Mobile Applications

• Loyalty management platforms. I don’t think it will be too long before plastic ‘points’ cards will be replaced by mobile apps (or at least exist as an option). What a great platform for pushing out redemption opportunities and driving to retail.
• Value -added experiences/services (see Kraft and their recipe helper application)
• Product browsing, sharing, customizing (see Reebok and their custom shoe design application).
• Building community and help encourage brand friendly lifestyles (see Nike and their Training Club application)

Mobile’s other features also have a place in the relationship development and management process. Mobile’s can take photos and record video for example. Each could be leveraged to help consumers build custom shopping lists or provide product feedback through image recognition and augmented reality applications).

Smartphones are also email devices. However, operating systems do not always render HTML emails properly. Any email marketing effort should have mobile-optimized versions to ensure a positive experience for all recipients no matter where they are digesting the communication.

Who should be playing in the mobile space:

The most fertile opportunities are for B2C brands in the retailing, CPG and QSR sectors.  I’d definitely include food and beverage, sporting and other lifestyle brands here. The Pharma industry could also do a lot with mobile as part of their lifestyle marketing efforts.

These are just some inital thoughts. Each point here is a juicy subject in it’s own right and I haven’t even touched on the measurement / segmentation / targeting side of relationship marketing.  But what I do see is how mobile can be a powerful platform for relationship marketing across the attraction-acquisition-conversion-retention-loyalty cycle.

Earning share of mobile is a huge first step in forming a meaningful consumer relationship.

What do you think?

Possibly Related Posts:

• The 3 Dimensions Of Effective Mobile Email
• Recent @JCDunn Work Blog Posts
• Brother, Can you spare a text?