Responsive emails render differently according to the device on which they are opened. This means that the emails you’ve spent your valuable time designing display the way you expect them to on every device, in front of every subscriber.
With a growing number of clients opting to access emails from mobile devices, it’s important to ensure your content is compatible.
More than 50% of all opened emails are now from mobile devices.
Responsive email templates help you to design marketing campaigns with the knowledge that they’ll work on mobile devices, reducing the risk to your reputation that occurs when a subscriber opens an email and it doesn’t render. Responsive templates that automatically accommodate for mobile technology also save you by lightening the design workload required before every email campaign.
Email marketing continues to outperform other mediums in the sector, so it’s important to ensure your content remains accessible.
What makes responsive email templates possible?
Responsive emails (and the templates they’re based on) are possible because of advances in HTML coding and styles.
Responsive emails consider the device dimensions and reformat the display with small changes to the styling used accordingly. That means when your email is viewed on a mobile screen, the display shifts to accommodate for the differences between desktop and mobile.
This prevents objects from overlapping and causing recipients’ wanting to opt out immediately from your campaign.
Source: Pinterest
Are responsive email templates hard to create?
In the past, creating responsive websites or emails required a lot of extra coding. Fortunately, that’s no longer the case. With ESPs like Campaign Monitor, mobile devices are part of the preview for every email you create.
In fact, Campaign Monitor offers free responsive email templates you can start building right away.
Using simple drag-and-drop actions, you can create sections of content that automatically displays differently according to the device. This will give you confidence that badly formatted emails won’t reach your clients during a campaign.
How do you measure the performance of responsive email templates?
If you’re not receiving the same level of engagement as before, it could be because your subscribers’ access habits have changed.
This is why it’s good to keep up to date with how people interact with your content.
Metrics provide you with details about how recipients accessed your email contents. It could be by mobile, desktop, or web clients, divided by region and other applicable categories.
You can keep track of your responsive email’s performance using the analytical tools from your ESP.
Are there any caveats?
Unfortunately, there are still clients that, for some reason or another, haven’t implemented all the upgrades that are necessary for responsive emails.
Using your ESP, metrics, and KPIs will help you determine how many clients on your lists are using mobile devices to access your emails.
Does it really matter?
If you’re keeping track of trends (as any good email marketer should), you’ll know that customer satisfaction determines your success or failure. Statistics show that recipients are likely to delete incorrectly rendered emails within a matter of seconds.
This doesn’t mean they aren’t happy with the content, but rather that subscribers were frustrated they couldn’t access the email. As more people start migrating their professional and personal communications to mobile devices, it makes sense that consumers want to do business with brands that provide them with the most convenience.
This makes keeping track of your clients’ access preferences key to ensure they keep engaging with your material and content.
Source: Campaign Monitor
By knowing the preferences of your subscribers, you can ensure the content stays optimized for any kind of device or client.
What now?
For some time, the global trend has been improving accessibility. From the days of media query to modern style sheets, email marketing has come a long way. Now, more than ever, it’s easier to ensure your design resonates with all your recipients, regardless of their preferences. Using responsive email templates makes this standard practice.
If you haven’t yet investigated the benefits of ensuring your emails are responsive, you may want to read this article. With the expected growth in mobile-based email marketing in 2019, not taking action can leave you trying to catch up.