Mobile email: who's right?

Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on July 20, 2007

blackberryAs the number of mobile email users rises, so does the number of articles on how this impacts email marketing and email design.

Just in the last couple of days we've had the big study from ExactTarget, Anne Holland worried and Julian Scott today with four tips on how to tackle the mobile community through email.

The problem for us non-experts is that not everyone agrees on the best way forward...strategy and design-wise. There are two competing viewpoints:
  • Treat mobile email users as a separate audience with dedicated campaigns, strategies, design and copywriting
  • Accept that mobile users will actually save your emails for later for viewing on a PC or laptop. So don't treat them too differently, because "designed-for-mobile" emails look pathetic on a PC
Best practices are slowly emerging through (as always) a hybrid approach: make some concessions to mobile email users, but still expect them to view most of your emails on a big screen.

But the experts are still feeling their way toward the best solutions to mobile design and content issues.

Part of the problem is that we don't have a good grasp of where mobile email use is headed. That's because there's still a lot of change ahead in terms of:
  • Mobile devices: is mobile email a non-issue when PDAs and smartphones get as good as the iPhone at handling HTML email?
  • Users: what happens when more consumers and non-professionals start to get into mobile email?
  • The supporting technologies: uptake of mobile email depends on how easy and cheap it is to get the service.
  • User habits: how will these change as people mature in their use of mobile email?
I'm "watching this space," and to help, I've set up two new categories of article links for you, covering mobile email user trends and mobile email design issues. There's plenty more to come on this topic...

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[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
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