Over the holiday season, I used my mobile phone more often than usual for a variety of tasks: checking email and Facebook, shopping online, browsing the internet. Being stuck in a car for 10 hours and away from your office for over a week necessitates some creativity when it comes to staying connected. Because I was stuck using my mobile device almost exclusively for these tasks, I became more aware of the frustrations associated with email messages and websites not designed with the mobile user in mind. And while this subject has been discussed before, I think it’s worth revisiting, especially as we enter a new year and begin planning new email marketing campaigns. So, without further ado, here’s my list of the top five ways to keep your mobile users happy.

Big Buttons

Fingers are much less precise than mouse pointers. Make it easier for your mobile subscribers to open and click by making buttons fat finger friendly.

Space Between Clickable Elements

Another problem that arises when you’re using a finger instead of a mouse is clickable elements placed too close together, resulting in mis-clicks. By adding additional white space between clickable elements, you can reduce the likelihood that users will find themselves waiting for the wrong page to load.

Important Information Visible Without Scrolling or Enlarging

When you have dozens of emails to catch up on, it’s important that you are able to grasp the main idea quickly. Test your email messages on a mobile device to ensure that font sizes are readable and that the user doesn’t have to scroll either vertically or horizontally to see your main message and call to action.

Single Columns

HTML is much less flexible than CSS when it comes to re-ordering columns and content blocks. Make it easy on yourself and on your subscribers by sticking to a single column that will display appropriately on a mobile screen.

Hide Unnecessary Content

It’s great to include social sharing buttons, links to your social media pages, and other secondary content in your email messages. But on a mobile device, all that extra content makes it more difficult for your subscribers to get the main message. Make mobile emails easier to scan and read by hiding images, text, and other content that isn’t strictly necessary.

As you’re designing new email campaigns for 2012, eConnect Email offers flexible design options, image management, templates, and inbox previews to help ensure that each message displays exactly as intended. By catering to the unique needs of mobile users, you can ensure that an increasingly mobile audience will continue to read and interact with your messages.

At least a third of your subscribers will check their email on a mobile device at least some of the time. And as mobile devices get faster and more reliable, that number will mushroom. That’s good news, because it means that people access their email more often and may be more likely to open messages they receive. But it also means that they’ll be talking to the person next to them on the subway, checking their heart rate at the gym, getting ready to fall asleep in bed, and eating lunch while trying to absorb the content of their email as well.

For email designers, all those distractions mean that people aren’t paying quite as much attention to the content on screen as they used to. And because most people now have touch phones, it means that they expect to be able to do everything you need them to do with one finger—one finger that’s a lot less precise than a mouse cursor. As you think about your next email design, ask yourself these questions to make things a little easier on your mobile subscribers.

• Are clickable elements big enough?

Can your subscribers easily click on the element they want without having to expand the screen size, an action which requires two fingers and therefore two hands?

• Is there enough space between clickable elements?

When a subscriber clicks, can he easily hit the right button or do “too close” elements encourage misfires?

• Can the call to action be seen at a glance?

Have you designed your call to action so that it stands out from surrounding content? It should be big, bold, and easily tappable by either the right or left thumb.

• Is there enough contrast between text and background?

Because mobile emails will be viewed in a variety of contexts—bright sun, fluorescent light, dim home lighting—it’s essential to provide sharp contrast between text, images, and background so the subscriber never has to squint to make out your creative.

• Can subscribers easily operate your navigation bar from a mobile device?

Lots of emails do great on the creative, but then stick a tiny, barely readable navigation bar across the top of the email. Experiment with other navigation options so subscribers can find what they want more easily.

At econnect Email, we want to make your email creation process as snafu-free as possible. Use our creation templates and email testing options to create messages your subscribers can easily open, read, and interact with, no matter where they happen to be when they click.

With every email you send, it gets easier to fall into old habits. Before you know it, they all start to look the same, or even worse, to incorporate some flagrant email marketing errors. If you haven’t taken the time to flesh out your “To Don’t” list, start by correcting these common mistakes:

1.  Failing to Design for Mobile Devices

With roughly 20% to 30% of users checking the majority of email on their phones and almost 90% doing so at least occasionally, you can’t afford to fall off the bandwagon. To get you started, here are some quick tips that will make your next email more mobile friendly:

• Use fonts that can be easily read on tiny screens.
• Put space between clickable elements to accommodate touch screens and clumsy fingers.
• Enlarge the call to action buttons, making it stand out from surrounding content.

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