Responsive Design for Mobile Email: Ooh! Shiny!

Responsive Design is catching a lot of buzz lately, and for good reason – it’s super cool and adaptive within a continually expanding mobile universe. Responsive Design can make a webpage shrink or expand to the device it’s being viewed on instantly through the use of CSS3 @media queries in the HTML coding.

Lately, however, much of the buzz is about applying these media queries within email code to generate responsive emails. There’s one giant catch that many articles of late seem to smooth over….

Why NOT to use responsive design in email

Responsive design doesn’t work in Android within their native email client, Gmail. 50% of US mobile phones are Smartphones according to a report by Chetan Sharma Consulting and of that 50%, 61.6% are Android OS as of July 2012 ComScore figures. So responsive design isn’t yet optimal for a full email rollout.

Effort to get responsive design going
As stated by Jordan Cohen in his article Go Mobile, or Go Home, “The effort required to code an email for responsive design can be intensive, and support for media queries is spotty — many marketers complain of breakage when their designs are viewed in unsupported email clients and web browsers.”

Let’s not miss underscoring his point that “effort” equates to “additional budget needs” for coding time. If you have an Apple OS-only mobile base or wish to target them exclusively, then rock on with the responsive design. If not, don’t be discouraged – all hope is not lost!

What can you do to optimize email for mobile?

You may be wondering why all this hype for a technique that isn’t truly optimal is such a popular subject of late. It’s topical due to the continued increase in mobile usage and simply, it’s shiny and has amazing potential to be über cool for email… someday… when it can work across all major platforms. The question then becomes – what CAN be done to optimize emails for mobile delivery across all platforms?

The shiniest object worthy of the email marketer’s affections is live content which has more technological power behind it than responsive design for email.

According to Jordan Cohen, ”… marketers can create device-specific versions of email templates and render them on the fly based on which devices recipients are using when they open email.” Sure, Jordan’s biased as he’s the VP of Marketing at Movable Ink – but he’s definitely not wrong.

There are actually a few options out there that can really help in the battle to mobilize.

The only downfall to live content is the need to create multiple email versions designed for the most popular devices. If resources and budget are available, it’s certainly worthy of a test.

Low budget Mobile Email optimization

If resources and budget aren’t available to check out live content, then sometimes the ol’ standbys are the way to go. From creating mobile optimized versions of email – essentially, doing what needs to be done for live content without actually using live content – to using simple design techniques to create mobile-friendly emails. Check out Optimize Your Email for Mobile by Mike Hotz for recommendations. Neither of these methods are optimal, but they’re both realistic within the limitations of a tight budget.

Mobile optimization is not a cheap endeavor, but it’s also not crazy expensive. The data speaks for itself as to why it’s important to mobilize emails – more and more people are using mobile devices to review their inbox. Check out this fancy and fabulous mobile infograph from Litmus to backup these wildly true claims.

Clients and marketers alike are accustomed to the low prices of working with email; however, to play with the big dogs, some coin needs to be dropped. That can be by doing it yourself or by choosing one of many email marketing agencies to do it. How you choose to do it can vary, but make the wisest choice based on facts, not simply because it’s shiny.

Samantha Iodice

Author

Samantha Iodice is an Email Strategist & Best Practice Maven for a global marketing services agency. Samantha tripped into the online marketing world via direct mail and has never looked back. She works like mad to convert outdated thinking and strategy for her clients no matter how hard they attempt to resist her super-powers. Samantha is proud to be a bit nuts, a sci-fi fan and an all-around geek. Follow her on Twitter @e_Maven or drop a line at samantha.iodice@gmail.com

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mobile email

http://twitter.com/stephanhov Stephan Hovnanian

Well said, Samantha, and I agree…responsive email design is too difficult (and support too spotty) to work effectively. Tried it last year, “bombed” was an understatement (although I tried to go full-monty: 100% fluid, responsive). But there are definitely some methods that can get you close enough so the emails are still readable on Android & Gmail.

First, though, people need to get those landing pages to be mobile optimized (and for that, I support responsive design). Otherwise it’s all for naught.
http://twitter.com/jvanrijn Jordie van Rijn

Samantha, great article and welcome to the Blog. I hope there will be a lot more good stuff following from the eMaven

I love the live content, but it will only work when images are turned on. So for a lot of mobile readers it wont have an impact (because they dont have their images turned on by default).
- Jordan Cohen
  
  Jordie, according to the latest Mobile Email Opens Report from Knotice, 35% of all email opens (ie, images displayed) are now occurring on mobile.
  
  Default image suppression has been around for years in the desktop environment, and marketers managed (thrived actually). Same applies to mobile: Marketers who create relevant, wanted messages will achieve high click-to-display-images rates and do fine.
  - http://twitter.com/jvanrijn Jordie van Rijn
    
    It was even 36,1%. I keep a pretty good eye on those stats.
    http://www.emailmonday.com/mobile-email-usage-statistics
    
    But it is good to know that not all have images on, and therefore imagebased optimization isn’t the only thing to look at if you want to mobileproof your emails.
- Samantha Iodice
  
  Thanks Jordie, I’m thrilled to be here and hope to continually provide the goods
Pete Austin

Responsive design is especially important for triggered emails, for example cart abandonment.

Time is of the essence with many types of triggered messages, because people need to read them *before* thay have made up their minds and bought elsewhere.

So the people who matter most are those able to read the emails right now, which will be more true of mobile users.
- http://twitter.com/stephanhov Stephan Hovnanian
  
  I agree with you, Pete, on responsive design for web…but for emails, triggered messages (especially for cart abandonment) are so focused and targeted that you wouldn’t come across as many layout and design issues as you would with, say, a newsletter. For that reason, you could adopt a simple layout for these messages that will perform fine from desktop to mobile.
- Samantha Iodice
  
  I agree 100% Pete; however, the quandary is that responsive design in email doesn’t work across the board. I would rather design and deploy an email optimized for mobile rendering that can indeed be seen than have a high percentage break because the coding isn’t supported.
  
  Better yet, a device triggered Movable Ink app 😉
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JimAtGoolara

Are we talking Firefly shiny or little kid shiny? 😉 Great article, Samantha. I like responsive design but you’re right, it can be a pain to set up, and, you STILL need to make sure your email looks good on a phone without it.
http://www.dmgerbino.com dmgerbino

Great info but a better source for mobile email platforms ability to support responsive email techniques can be found at the StyleCampaign blog. The October 2012 post provides a lot of detail: http://stylecampaign.com/blog/2012/10/responsive-email-support/
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http://www.bcgurus.com Nicole Loyal-Windham

Great resource for the Responsive Design Knowledge Hub. Check it out here: http://goo.gl/7S6pye
Thanks!
- Jordie van Rijn
  
  Thanks for including that link Nicole, there are some handy articles behind it!
  - http://www.bcgurus.com Nicole Loyal-Windham
    
    You’re welcome glad you found it helpful!
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