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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

For all the talk of operating system fragmentation becoming a development burden in the mobile space (and it is a big issue), I’d argue that another type of fragmentation poses an even greater challenge for marketers looking to intelligently explore and evolve their mobile programming options

Welcome to the age of customer fragmentation.

Customer fragmentation for mobile, as I define it, has both a ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ definition. At the macro level it concerns how a marketer’s target audience is rarely neatly confined to a single device family or operating system. Marketers will have customers that use iPhones, Android devices, Blackberries and so on. Investment decisions need to be made about which platforms and device features offer the optimal mix of reach, experience and response.

At the macro level, there’s also the issue of distinguishing between Smartphone users and non-Smartphone users and whether SMS (for example) would prove to be a more effective channel than a native application.

However, it’s at the micro level that added wrinkles place emphasis on smart customer persona definition and segmentation activities that should be a part of any thorough and thoughtful marketing exercise.

Even within broad segments such as ‘iPhone users’, there are nuances in how device features are used by individual consumers. Massive app download numbers may suggest that everyone is an app user, but how is that overall trend distributed among ‘gamers’, ‘productivity fiends’, ‘social networkers’, and ‘brand loyalists’?

The same can be said for Blackberry users.  Deep enterprise penetration means a strong core of white collar email power users, but Blackberry has also been gaining traction among younger audiences who are addicted to the Blackberry instant messaging client.

Of course, then you need to consider how SMS, LBS service and camera use may be distributed among your customers by age, geography or demographic profiles.  And perhaps the mobile web is the better choice given any number of reasons from development costs to how customers interact with your existing brand assets.

Before hands get thrown up in frustration, it’s worth noting that the costs and time required for smart customer profiling and segmentation will be recouped many times over as you create a foundation for value-laden programming that delivers genuine and recurring utility.

Here are 5 tips for effectively addressing customer fragmentation:

Use existing assets to gather direct-from-customer data

You already probably have a website, an email list, a bricks and mortar location and so on. Use these as vehicles for asking questions and gathering observations about how your customers want to be engaged via mobile.

Mine existing 3^rd party research and validate against existing customer profiles

Market research firms are perpetually pumping out reports on various consumer habits, preferences and activities. Publishers, ad networks and industry associations routinely trumpet audience data. Take advantage.

Be thorough with competitive analysis and extract learning from in-market examples

Case studies abound. Most brand apps are free for you to download and pick apart user experiences.  Nearly every phone has a browser and SMS campaigns are easy to enter. Put some thumbs to phone and discover what works and what doesn’t.

Analytics, Analytics, Analytics

Your website’s analytics package should tell you what mobile devices and operating systems are hitting your site. There will be some. How do those results index against wired web norms? Tools like MapInfo (Disclosure: a sister company of my employer Digital Cement) offer deep postal code level data on consumer behaviour and preferences.

Pilot programs with lower barriers to entry to gain deeper insights

Perhaps my most important recommendation is ‘try stuff’. You can’t beat running a real world campaign for actionable insight. Mobile advertising and mobile search are a good way to start and developing a mobile landing page can be very cost effective. Create mobile friendly versions of your email campaigns. Most SMS providers offer the use of shared short codes to help minimize start up costs.

If you find yourself thinking I’m not saying anything new, perfect. You have the right orientation for maximizing mobile marketing returns. If your agency is recommending a mobile program without this kind of leg work or justification….well, you know.

The velocity with which consumers are integrating mobile into their lives is only slightly ahead of their expectation to be able to get what they want, when they want it on the device. Your customers will want to find you there if they don’t already.

Possibly Related Posts:

• The 3 Dimensions Of Effective Mobile Email