No man is an iland

I get a lot of questions, and many are essentially about finding short cuts to email marketing success. Hey, we all like short cuts: can’t blame a marketer for asking.

If I knew any, I’d have already written about them.

One such “short cut” is buying a list of email addresses. You know, the “100,000 dentists for $200″ or “25 million opt-in addresses for $350″ type of list. I don’t recommend buying them and people want to know why. So I wrote this.

It’s an updated overview of reasons, evidence and links to convince those unfamiliar with ethical email marketing that buying address lists is only a short cut to problems, not success. You may find it useful for showing colleagues and others who found a “great offer on eBay”.

Quite happy to hear dissenting voices in the comments here.

For me, buying lists just flies in the face of what we’re trying to achieve with email marketing in a social online world: how can you build trust when a relationship begins by treating an email address as a commodity to be bought and sold like (very cheap) cattle?

Find related articles:

• Channel: Basics of email advertising

It’s hard to find a clear explanation of just how the growth of mobile email changes things for email marketers.

Partly because there are no simple answers to satisfy our need for…simple answers.

For a long time you could hear experts saying you should simply add a link to a mobile-friendly version of your email at the top of your templates.

Which sounded easy until you actually tried to create a link that would work on all mobile devices.

Or tried to define exactly what a mobile-friendly version should look like.

What we do know is that the challenge is shifting. So after setting the scene last week, it’s time to explore the issues in more depth…

Previously, the big deal with mobile email was the poor way that most devices could handle HTML email: they made a mess of it. And with little common ground between different mobile devices, it was nigh on impossible to find nice design solutions.

Fortunately, the “do nothing about it” approach was not an unreasonable strategy. Why?

Mobile email was more or less limited to B2B. More importantly, people largely used mobile email to sort their email, responding to important, personal messages and saving the rest for back at the PC.

There simply weren’t enough people trying to read and interact with your emails to panic about the whole mobile email issue.

That admirable “head in the sand” approach is now looking a little tired, because the nature of mobile email has changed. For a start, there’s much more of it about than before.

For example, in their report of a survey of over 2,000 adults in the US and UK, e-Dialog noted that:

“…33 percent of consumers in the US and UK access email on their mobile devices in addition to their computers”

But there are three other important trends here that concern email marketers.

1. Smartphones

The first is the growth of smartphones. Last week I gave you this collection of stats showing how smartphone sales were gathering pace.

Two quick stats from that collection: Gartner expect 500 million smartphones to sell in 2012, by which time Morgan Stanley expect smartphone sales to have outstripped PC sales.

You can find out who’s using smartphones on your own list with the help of email analytics tools (like MailboxIQ or Litmus).

2. From triage to engagement

Smartphones are far better at handling HTML email and offer a much better overall email experience than traditional mobile phones. Indeed, they offer a much better online experience per se. As a result, mobile phone users can easily do things online that were largely unheard of a couple of years ago.

For example, analysts Gartner note:

“By 2011, over 85 percent of handsets shipped globally will include some form of browser. In mature markets, such as Western Europe and Japan, approximately 60 percent of handsets shipped will be smartphones with sophisticated browsing capability and the ability to render conventional HTML sites in some manner”

The same trend is impacting mobile email.

A survey conducted by smartFocus found that:

“Two years ago the mobile was almost entirely used to read, filter and delete unimportant emails, whereas now 30% of users are reading and replying to emails through their mobile.”

So we now have people owning and using devices that provide “good enough” support for them to start using email and websites in meaningful ways that were previously limited to netbooks, laptops and desktop PCs.

3. Mobile email not limited to B2B

This growth in mobile email (numbers and interaction) is no longer just a B2B issue. For example, the ExactTarget channel preference survey found the majority of smartphone users:

“…sending and receiving more personal emails as opposed to work-related emails”

The iPhone has turned the smartphone from a management tool to a consumer accessory.

So we have a massive growth in the number of devices able to handle mobile email in a fairly sophisticated way. And we have massive growth in the number of people willing to engage with that email.

The challenges

Now the good news is that the need for some kind of mobile email strategy only arises because mobile devices now have decent HTML email tools and features.

Not every device is great with HTML email, of course, but we can reasonably assume that those users most likely to make use of mobile email will favor those devices best suited to it.

We already know that mobile web browsing is dominated by devices using the web-friendly iPhone and Android operating systems, even though smartphones using the Symbian OS have more market share.

The same is true of email, as demonstrated in figures released by Pivotal Veracity.

In a sense, we might think the problem has taken care of itself. If mobile email users have smartphones that are so good at displaying HTML email, we no longer need “mobile email design”.

Were it only that simple.

We still have two challenges.

First, yes, an ever-increasing proportion of the email you send out will be read on smartphones and other HTML-ready mobile devices. But while they are good at handling HTML email, they still have their own idiosyncrasies. For example, Anna Yeaman reveals how the iPhone will automatically increase the size of small fonts (and tells you how to tell it not to).

Equally, screen sizes are, obviously, a lot smaller than your typical desktop monitor.

So there’s still a design challenge there, albeit a far easier one than a couple of years ago.

Second, people are not sitting in front of their PCs looking at their mobile devices. Mobile email is not just about the email part, it’s also about being mobile.

This means the way people use email is different. So the mobile email users on your list likely differ from everyone else in terms of all sorts of key attributes, most of which we don’t yet have any idea about.

Do they check email more often? At different times? Do they spend more time on an email? Or less? Are they more or less tolerant of untargeted messages? Will they scroll? etc. etc.

Figures released by Litmus, for example, suggest people using mobile devices spend more time with an email. And the e-Dialog survey found mobile email users less tolerant of higher-frequency emails than “traditional” email users.

And to make it more complicated, you can’t lump “mobile users” into a single category. Compare the likely email behavior of the iPad owner languishing over a brandy in the late evening and the iPhone owner with five minutes to spare while waiting for the kids outside school.

Yikes!

Solutions and resources – design

So what do we do about all that? Other than putting our heads back in the online sand?

There are two schools of thought on the design issue.

The first says we should try and isolate mobile users and send them emails designed specifically for the device they use. Some possible tactics for identifying such users are:

• An appropriate option in the sign-up form (e.g. tick here if you read your emails on a smartphone)
• Ditto in a subscriber preference center
• Segmenting out those who use “view on a mobile” or “view on your iPhone” links in your normal emails
• Survey your subscribers

My problem with this approach is device loyalty: we assume people always view the email on their iPad or netbook. The reality, I suspect, is that people will chop and change. They might use their iPhone in the evening and desktop PC during the day, for example.

Designing for a specific device might then backfire when that design is viewed somewhere else. It also means much more work in terms of template creation etc.

The alternative approach is to design emails that display well everywhere.

That wasn’t a real option before, when mobile devices were frankly crap at displaying HTML email. Unless you just used a very, very dumbed down email design.

But although they are still different, there is enough common ground between most modern mobile devices and the PC environment to allow you to design an email that is flexible enough to work on the iPad, PC and iPhone.

Which is all very well, but just how do you design a cross-platform email? And if you go for the device-specific approach, how do you design for, say, the iPhone?

And if you do find a solution, what about landing pages? As Dylan Boyd asks:

“What if they actually want to click from your email and read, react, buy, comment or engage? Are your landing pages or web site optimized for a good mobile experience?”

It can help to think of mobile email as a more intense environment for many of the best practices we already apply. The preview pane, which needs to include recognition elements like a logo, but also express the value of the email and drive action, is much smaller. Subject line displays are generally shorter, placing more emphasis on the idea of frontloading.

Here some useful resources to get you started…

Mobile email design – tips

• Optimizing for mobile email using the @media query
• Mobile email category at the Style Campaign blog
• iPhone email optimization
• Mobile: Should You Care?
• Apple’s iPad: redefining the email experience
• iPad and the future of email design
• Top 10 Mobile Rendering Recommendations
• Mobile Email Marketing: Myths & Realities

Mobile email design – preview tools

• Nine email preview tools (and why you need one)
• 3 iPad email preview tools (also includes advice on designing for the iPad)
• 16 iPad email preview tools, stencils, PSDs and a hack emulator
• iPhone & mobile Top 10 email preview test tools

Mobile email design – HTML and CSS support

• HTML support of Android Email clients
• CSS3 support across email clients (includes the iPhone)

Mobile email design – examples and showcases

• Panic’s mobile-friendly approach
• 11 skinny emails

What about strategy?

If mobile email design is growing up and thinking about taking driving lessons, then mobile email strategy is still on bottled milk and wearing diapers.

A lot of what we know about how people use email is based on much more “static” email reading devices. We don’t have enough experience with mobile email use to properly understand how it will change, for example, the best time or day to send out email.

Does the window for B2B mails now extend into the early evening as more commuters check email on the train home?

Should you send B2C mails earlier in the day, now that dad is checking email while watching the kids’ soccer practice?

Can we perhaps transfer to email much of the insights and expertise from the broader SMS and mobile marketing world?

With mobility comes diversity. At this point, the least thing we can do is be aware that assumptions built up through observation and tests in a pre-mobile email environment may no longer hold in the future.

In particular, we may find our subscribers splintering into many more different types of email user as mobile devices give them more choice about when and how to tackle email.

I’d certainly value your thoughts on how the growth of mobile email changes what you actually send to your list and when. It’s new territory for many of us…so any experience you can offer is most welcome…

Find related articles:

• Channel: Mobile email

After flattering to deceive for so long, the mobile web appears to have finally arrived. Thanks in large part to the iPhone.

And with it comes mobile email. For example:

• An October 2009 report from the Radicati Group suggested there were 139 million mobile email users in 2009. It predicts this number to rise to over 1 billion mailboxes by the end of 2013.
• The 2009 Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index revealed that 36% of Australian mobile phone users had accessed email via their phone.

The associated challenge for email marketers is not what it once was.

We used to panic about cumbersome mobile email software with HTML allergies, but this issue is receding as email users continue to gravitate to smartphones. Indeed, there is some suggestion that it’s the spread of smartphones that is driving the growth of mobile email.

A mid-2009 channel preference survey by ExactTarget found that smartphone owners were over 50% more likely to have increased their use of email in the previous 6 months.

ExactTarget’s Morgan Stewart noted, for example, that:

…we are seeing a reversal of the trend of waning email use among college students, specifically because of smartphone adoption.

I believe there are two big challenges ahead.

Mobile email design is one, but not design for mobile devices per se, since the iPad, netbooks etc. do a pretty good job with displaying HTML email.

Not design for those mobile phones with poor handling of HTML email, either, since people who want and use mobile email will migrate to smartphones.

The design challenge is a halfway house between the two: design for smartphones. They are smaller and less robust in how they handle email when compared with a netbook, but a lot simpler to master than the mobile phone disasters of the past.

The second challenge is adjusting strategies and tactics when you know people are reading your emails away from the office or home PC.

I’ll explore current thinking on both issues next week, but by way of introduction, I’ve compiled a set of statistics on just how popular smartphones are now and will become. And just which smartphones are dominating the market, the mobile web and mobile email.

You’ll find all those statistics and their sources here.

The numbers are important because they alert us to the potential scale of mobile email use in the coming months and years.

If you thought mobile email was a minority pastime yet to be considered for the Olympic marketing games, then check these numbers for evidence to the contrary.

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• Channel: Mobile email

A recent post suggested space limitations in email and webmail interfaces might leave your subject line looking a little odd.

But this isn’t just about your subject line causing a wry smile or a little embarrassment when a word gets cut off in an inconvenient place. There’s more to it than that.

Here are three more “subject line traps” spotted in real emails.

1. Subject lines may end up shorter than you think

Typical subject line advice talks about keeping subject lines under 50 characters. It’s not really total length that’s important, but what you put at the front.

You’re probably familiar with the idea of frontloading, where the words likely to have the biggest impact on response are put as close to the start of your subject line as possible.

Our typical 50 character threshold for these hotwords may not be enough, though. My Yahoo! Mail inbox, for example, has just 27 characters displayed.

A little laxity can see frontloading defeated.

This retail promotion has a short, 50 character subject line:

Hit it out of the park with iPad this Father’s Day

But any display up to and including 31 characters fails to show the subject line’s hotword: iPad.

Hit it out of the park with iP

Perhaps, then, frontloading should mean what it says…hotwords right at the front, not just close to the front.

2. Beware generic beginnings

There are some obvious hotwords you might want to put right at the front of your subject line. Like “Memorial Day Sale”. You can’t really go wrong there.

These “generic” hotwords look fine in isolation and in theory, but not when placed alongside competitors using the same approach. Especially where shorter subject line displays cut off the subsequent copy that might distinguish your message.

Consider this inbox:

Memorial Day Stars & Savings – Up to 75% Off
Memorial Day Sale Preview + Save With a $10 Coupon
Memorial Day Weekend Sale — $15 Off Purchases of $150 or More!
Memorial Weekend Blowout – 20% Off Every Order!

Then one that truncates subject lines to 28 characters:

Memorial Day Stars & Savings
Memorial Day Sale Preview +
Memorial Day Weekend Sale –
Memorial Weekend Blowout – 2

There is nothing to make any one message stand out. Fortunately, no inbox is likely to look quite like that, though the danger is there as people make growing use of dedicated email accounts just for promotional email.

Here are some more subject lines:

MEMORIAL DAY SALE: 20% OFF Your Entire Order
73% SAVINGS Memorial Weekend Sale…Going on Now
PETCO Memorial Day Sale! Save Up To 40% + FREE Shipping!

And with the same 28 character cutoff:

MEMORIAL DAY SALE: 20% OFF Y
73% SAVINGS Memorial Weekend
PETCO Memorial Day Sale! Sav

All do a better job of standing out from the competition as subject lines are truncated. (See the Retail Email Blog for retail subject line showcases).

3. Take care with conditioners

Conditioners are those little extra words or numbers that change the meaning of the words that precede them. There is an important difference between “50% off Ice Age” and “50% off Ice Age 3″.

The short subject display issue outlined above can lead to problems, if those “conditioners” are critical. Consider:

Make your neighbors green with envy – save on patio, lawn & garden?

At a 25-26 character display, it looks like this:

“Make your neighbors green”

The play on words is lost, since “with envy” is gone. In fact, the meaning of the subject line changes completely, since we might assume it was an email about making your neighbors more environmentally aware.

Emails promoting a specific product can suffer equally. Take:

Amazon.com recommends “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw” and more

This is the third in the “Wimpy Kid” series (which my kids loved BTW).

A potential problem here is that any display up to 45 characters doesn’t reveal that critical piece of information. 43 character displays show, for example:

Amazon.com recommends “Diary of a Wimpy Kid

It’s likely I’ve already got the first in the series (that’s why I got the recommendation), so I may completely overlook the email, thinking it’s promoting something I already own.

These problems are not easy to solve. Nor are they necessarily huge in the big scheme of things. But Amazon might test, for example:

Amazon.com recommends new “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw”

Awareness counts

None of the above should override your basic subject line priorities. But once you’re aware of potential issues with truncation, then you can tweak and test appropriately. Testing, of course, is the only way to be sure of the subject line words and approach that work best for you and your audience.

And sometimes, frankly, you just have to smile:

Get up to 70% off children’s fashion
Get up to 70% off children (at 26 characters)

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• Channel: Subject lines