As much as we’d like to, we’d love to be in control of what happens to our emails once they hit your inbox (if they even do in the first place). We’d gladly have everyone in our distribution list open it, click through it and result in a conversation. In a perfect world…
When it comes to email marketing, there are a lot of variables that we can and cannot control. However, what we can do, is adapt to these obstacles and send emails that are relevant and written for the consumer. Here are 3 ways we can achieve this:
- Optimize emails that cater to all email clients. To clarify, email clients are the type of email programs/software we use, not the actual contact’s address. Examples of these are Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo, and the list goes on and on.
- Each email client displays emails differently. What a reader sees in Gmail may not look the same compared to someone who is reading an email in Microsoft Outlook. Although you can’t optimize your email separately for each email client, but you can use different tools to preview how your email will look to readers on different platforms. This will give you a better idea of what you should include in your email.
- Remember Mobilegeddon? It has been confirmed that the most common way consumers read their email are by using their mobile device. Great! That means people can take your emails with them wherever they go and not be held down by a desktop that cannot fit in your pocket. The problem?
- You can’t control whether someone is reading your email from an iPad or a Blackberry phone, which have two very different screen sizes and handheld capabilities. The solution? You can optimize your email templates with responsive design to adapt to the device’s shape and font size.
- Check with your client service provider (Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Hubspot, etc.) to see if they provide responsive designs for emails. This way, no matter who receives your email, whether it be on an iPhone or an Android, they will see the same email, just on a different screen!
- Be sure that your emails consist of more than just images. The reason being that sometimes server issues can occur and your images may not show within your email. With nothing for the reader to see, they might as well delete your email or simply unsubscribe. We certainly do not want that to happen.
- Make sure your email is a mix of text and images so the message comes through even if the images do not.
- Always use ‘alt text‘ for your images
- Don’t use images for any major conversion points in your emails, unless you can replace that image with a clear hyperlink if it doesn’t load.