Six ways to keep your emails cutting edge for mobile viewing

Sometimes it’s hard to say what makes one email work and another one flop. There are numerous factors that influence whether or not someone opens your email, clicks your link, and follows through with your call to action.

But following best practices will consistently improve every email you send. And that translates to more opens, clicks, and conversions.

Here are six tips to improve every email you send.

1. Use preheader text

Preheader text is the little line of text that you see next to the subject line that gives you a hint of what is in the email. Crafting this line well can make the difference between your email getting the swipe-delete or an open.

2. Make your text easy to read

Don’t strain your reader’s eyes. Choose larger font sizes, high-contrast font colors, and enough line spacing to make reading easy on smaller screens. San serif fonts usually work best for large amounts of text.

Speaking of large amounts of text, limit your words to what is the most important. You only have their attention for so long, make it count.

3. Use big buttons

Have you ever tried to press that tiny linked word with your thumb and the only thing your screen does is zoom and zoom? Make sure your buttons are large enough to be tapped by a finger; aim for at least 44-46 pixels wide. Your readers will thank you, and you’ll get a click—not an unsubscribe.

4. Use images wisely

Images can resize automatically, depending on the code that you use, but you still want to keep the image width around 600 pixels or less. Doing this helps it to load faster and look great even when it’s resized to fit a mobile screen. Also, if you use text in your image, test it to make sure it’s large enough to be read when the image shrinks.

5. Keep your layout simple

Using a single-column layout makes your information easy-to-digest quickly as well as saves the reader from scrolling left-to-right. Remember, these email users are on the go. Keeping your email simple will increase your chances of it being read and clicked on.

6. Use a mobile-responsive template

There are many mobile-friendly HTML templates available that can be modified to fit your needs. Services like BEE Free, Chamaileon, TOPOL, and Mosaico also offer free online email builders with responsive templates. These are designed to make your email adjust to different screen sizes. People don’t usually go through the painful process of scrolling left-to-right to read an email, so having a mobile-responsive template can save your email from the delete button, or worse, the unsubscribe.

Even if you can’t switch to a fully-responsive template, using the first five steps above will help you reach the mobile audience. Taking these simple steps will help you increase engagement with the growing majority of mobile readers.