Keep Your Emails on Target to Avoid Missing Opportunities

More than 50% of today’s emails are being read on mobile devices, a number that is growing steadily year over year and doesn’t show much sign of slowing down. If the emails you are sending aren’t built for the ever-changing landscape, chances are high the messages you’re sending aren’t being viewed as you had intended.

From iPhone to Android to Gmail to Outlook, there is a seemingly endless number of options for programs that will act as your personal inbox. Each one of these programs will take the code that lies underneath your email and display it in its own way, which can lead to a variety of issues. This makes it extremely important to consider your audience, know where they’re checking their inbox and design your communication to accommodate that.

With the majority of emails being opened on mobile devices either through native applications like the iPhone’s Mail app or through webmail clients (and their respective apps) like Gmail or Yahoo, it is not only recommended, but necessary, to ensure readability on small screens. If that wasn’t enough to worry about, this also makes it extremely important to know your audience.

According to the Pew Research Center, in 2016, 12% of US adults accessed the internet via a smartphone alone — and that number jumps to 20% when annual household incomes are less than $30,000. If that number doesn’t seem high, another 10% of US adults earning between $30,000 and $99,9999 fall into that category. In staffing, the importance of this is apparent in a demographic like light industrial workers. For many people in this space, accessing their inbox on a daily basis may only be possible through a smartphone, and if that email is not easily readable on said smartphone, the worker becomes more likely to abandon it.

Readability includes ensuring the copy is easy on the eye, the message and all its assets (including any images, attachments and the code behind the email itself) load quickly, the email is easy to interact with and there are fallbacks in place for when those images don’t load.

PREMIUM CONTENT: Sourcing Automation Technologies

The basics of readability don’t only apply to those viewing emails on smaller screens. What if your audience is a group of office workers who are on desktop computers all day? For many offices, this means access to Microsoft Office, and despite the myriad of options, Outlook still seems to be the standard. Outlook, unlike just about every other email client out there, doesn’t use an internet browser like Internet Explorer to render the code that the sender provides it, instead choosing to do it in Microsoft Word, and thus creating a nightmare for designers and developers. Double-checking to confirm the email looks good and works well in Outlook can be the difference between a decision-maker in the organization reading through it or sending it to the trash.

The emails you send represent your firm, and guaranteeing their functionality is a signal of intent for the reader. They aide in building relationships, fostering communication and keeping interested parties up-to-date. If that email is broken on arrival, there is every chance it will be marked as spam before it even has a chance.

Give your marketing every opportunity by getting it right from the beginning. Know your audience, build it to work in as many email programs as possible and test it repeatedly to ensure it does.

MORE: Wake up your marketing strategy

 

Mark Yesilevskiy

Mark Yesilevskiy
Mark Yesilevskiy is director of content design for Haley Marketing Group. He can be reached at myesilevskiy (at) haleymarketing (dot) com.

Mark Yesilevskiy

Share This Post

Tweet

Related Articles

Powered by staffingindustry.com ·