Last week I posted a blog on Six Tips for Designing a Mobile Landing Page.  As I promised last week, here is my continuation post for tips on designing an email for a mobile device.

If you read last week’s post then you are an expert on creating a landing page for your mobile campaign. Now, the only question remaining is how will you begin to send visitors to your page? One way is by launching an email campaign.

Typically, you wouldn’t want to design an email greater than 600 pixels wide for viewing on a desktop or laptop. Unfortunately, an email designed for mobile is not just a smaller version of an email made for a desktop, so you can throw that 600 pixels wide rule out the window when designing for mobile. Check out this example below of a comparison between an iPhone and a Nexus One Android phone. The email displaying on the Nexus One was not appropriately sized for the handset screen.

iPhone and Nexus One: comparison of a mobile optimized page vs. a non-mobile optimized page

As you can see, it makes a difference!

Heads up before we begin, here come some awesome fun facts you’ll want to remember:

1)  There will be 5.8 billion mobile subscribers worldwide by 2013 (there are currently 4.3 billion)

2)  30% of those mobile subscribers in 2013 will be smart phones

Quite a trend!

BUT WAIT! You’re probably thinking…how could designing an email for mobile be much different than designing a landing page for mobile? You’re right, there is overlap between the two so to spare you having to read the same thing twice.  In this post, I’ll only highlight a couple new things that are relevant to email only. However, be sure to go through last week’s post on designing a landing page for mobile to get the full scope.

Lets begin to optimize your email message for the mobile landscape!

KISS – Keep it Simple, Smarty!

Litmus conducted a study on more than 4 million opens across hundreds of different email campaigns and found that 51% of recipients delete your email within two seconds of opening it. This is just another revealing truth that cannot be ignored when creating an email campaign. However, if that is the amount of time it takes to lose interest while on a PC, then imagine how short of time you will have to make a great impression on a mobile device while your reader is waiting for her oil change or walking back to his desk from lunch.

SLL – Subject Line Length

While 35 – 45 characters is the common recommendation for email subject lines,  the smaller screens on mobile devices display even fewer characters. Try to keep your subject line to 18 characters or less for a mobile email campaign.

CTA – Call to Action Placement

Above the fold! Above the fold! Above the fold! For mobile, that is having your CTA in the first 230 pixels.  What you do not want is your recipient to be spending too much time scrolling to figure out what to do next.  Make the CTA button stand out with bold text or a contrasting color button.

As marketers, it’s important to recognize that professionals are using their mobile devices to stay connected, but also are relying on them to stay informed and make business decisions when working remotely. So, don’t hold off any longer, it’s time to embrace mobile marketing!

Please refer to last week’s post in order to see specific pixel sizing tips, button size tips, and optimal line lengths for mobiles.

Also, if you have some words of wisdom or good tips and tricks to add, please do so. We like making friends.