James reads his emails on the slick new iPhone. Sarah uses Gmail and loves her ageing Android too much to say goodbye. Bob’s at work, using Outlook on a desktop PC. We’re about to send all of them a message. And we know it’s going to look fantastic. Not just for these individuals but on the countless device and email client combinations out there. That’s because the mailing has been carefully developed from planning to execution with responsive design in mind. Nearly 70% of companies send responsive emails these days. But how many of them are doing so as effectively as they could be? Take a look at these ten rules to find out how your responsive emails stack up.…
responsive design
A fresh way to be relevant for your customers
There’s a fine line between connecting with your users based upon their email/website activity and inadvertently stalking them. The number one rule when trying to deliver relevant content to your users is “do not come across as Big Brother in an Orwellian dystopia” – people just don’t seem to like having their privacy invaded for some reason. Here are some suggestions of how, through teaming up with a company like Fresh Relevance, you can provide your users with useful and relevant content, specifically looking at email communications, in a way that should ingratiate them to you rather than get their hackles up. Getting Started with Fresh Relevance The great thing with Fresh Relevance is there is very little development required…
Responsive email design patterns part 2: The exotic navigation
Optimising or responsive email for mobile means more than making them mobile friendly. There is a range of possibilities to make your email win big on the small screen. One element that deserves extra attention in any superior mobile email is the navigation bar. In my previous article I went into the popular design patterns for responsive email navigation. Let’s see some more exotic examples, because you don’t want to be standard, do you? Iconise This is pretty cool. Replacing certain navigational elements with icons allows you to free up space and be more visual. In the Swarovski email ‘gifts’ becomes a gift icon and the ‘shop finder’ a way sign. The rest of the navigation is shifted below the…
Cutting edge email design
I was recently a keynote speaker at a European email summit in Amsterdam and was asked to talk about “Cutting edge email design”. Whilst researching emails for this event it struck me that one man’s junk can be another man’s treasure. The reason I say this is because it depends on your role or skill set as to what you see as cutting edge email design. I have selected three of the emails I used in the presentation to highlight some design techniques but also to show how important it is to know your audience and to design for them, not you. The first email we will look at is a Dogs Trust email designed to look great whether images…
Love at first sight
We all know how important it is to make a good first impression – especially when we’ve spent time and effort to look good in front of those we want to attract! So how do you do that with emails? Building an email database is about more than building a data capture form on your website as you need to drive traffic – whether it’s SEO, PPC, generating followers through social platforms or more traditional media – getting people to your website is an expensive business. So, when people do find their way to your website, ensure two things are done well; make it quick and easy for them to add their email address to your mailing list and create…
A roundup of responsive email support in 3rd party email apps – Android edition
There are certainly strengths and limitations of default email clients on various mobile devices we use all the time, but what about the constantly growing list of 3rd party email clients available in the App Store or the Google Play marketplace? In the second in a series of blogs on the topic, I’ve run some tests on a selection of the more popular ones available in Google’s Play Store. If you missed the first blog that gave a round up of the iOS 3rd party email clients, you can read it here. Two templates were tested, each using non-standard Google fonts as well as a CSS3 trick (rotation) to see whether those technologies were supported. One template was responsive, with…
Top 10 things to consider when building responsive email.
Your users Having a good understanding of who your subscribers are and knowing what types of devices they use is obviously the most important thing. You should not only understand who your users are but consider whether they have the latest devices or possibly only read emails on the desktop. Most email broadcasting platforms these days give a device breakdown. This is important but it is also worth remembering that most people use more than one device to check their emails. What are you trying to achieve? This is a question that relates to all email but is especially relevant when it comes to responsive email. Some marketing managers are too keen to hide vast swathes of the email, wrongly…