With 68% of email campaigns being opened on a mobile device, email with a mobile-friendly design is no longer an option; it’s a need.

Continue reading for seven crucial guidelines for developing mobile-friendly email marketing.

What is the significance of mobile-friendly emails?
As marketers, we used to be concerned about how our emails would appear in different email clients. However, the proliferation of devices and email clients has presented a dilemma. Email openings on mobile devices climbed by 30% between 2010 and 2015.

Keep an eye on the length of your topic line
According to Return Path, an average desktop inbox shows roughly 60 characters of an email’s subject line, but mobile devices display just 25-30 characters. After reviewing over 2 million emails from 3,000 senders, they observed that the majority of subject lines were 41-50 characters long.

Before you start optimizing your subject lines for mobile, it’s a good idea to know what proportion of your subscribers will read your email on a mobile phone, tablet, or desktop, so you can establish the optimum subject line length.

This information is likely to be available in your email reports, depending on the email marketing service you employ. Customers of Campaign Monitor may access this information in the email client report.

The report details which email clients your subscribers use to see your campaigns.

If you notice that a large percentage of your subscribers view your emails on an iPhone or Android smartphone, keep your subject lines around 25-30 characters so that they appear well on such platforms.

Make use of pre-header text
Pre-header content is often neglected, left off, or just forgotten, yet it may be quite beneficial in mobile-friendly emails.

If you’re not aware what pre-header text is, it’s the first line of material in your email that complements your subject line by offering further context to attract your reader to open your email.

Here’s a screenshot of Gmail on an iPhone 6. The preheader text and other components are visible. People may change their settings to show more pre-header/preview text, however the majority of people who utilize the default settings will see the following:

Preheader length varies by email client and device, so experiment with various lengths to determine what works best depending on where your subscribers view your email campaigns (mobile, tablet, or desktop). Then, create an email campaign to match.

Keep your copy brief
When writing text for mobile-friendly emails, keep it brief and to the point. Create brief, scannable, and consumable content chunks (i.e., bulleted lists, short paragraphs) that allow your reader to easily digest your text and grasp the action they should take in response to your message.

“Overall screen size is limited when it comes to digesting email information on a mobile device, and customers are more likely to be multitasking when they receive your message on mobile,” says Litmus. It’s more crucial than ever to engage the user effectively; restrict the quantity of material you offer, and make it quickly scannable by utilizing headings, bullet points, and short paragraphs of text wherever feasible.”

This InVision newsletter is a fantastic example. The language is brief yet persuasive, and it is closely tied to both the picture above and the button content below.

Consider your imagery
Because not all mobile devices display photos by default, it’s wise to prepare for a “images off” experience and ensure that your email still makes sense if your images don’t appear. According to Web Marketing Today, “blocked pictures continue to be a difficulty for image-heavy mailings.” The descriptive body text must perform the majority of the work. It’s better to think of visuals as supplemental to the surrounding text than as a replacement for it.”

Keep CTAs in the spotlight
When writing emails for busy, on-the-go readers, you want to go straight to the point and tell them exactly what you want them to do right away.

To make your email more mobile-friendly, place your call to action at the top. Make your CTA buttons at least 44 x 44 pixels in size to achieve optimum clickability.

Consider this Freshbooks example:

Allow breathing (and clicking) space
Remember to provide enough white space around links and CTAs to make them clickable when producing your mobile-friendly email. This is shown in the Freshbooks example. They give enough space around the CTA button so that it’s simple to click without unintentionally clicking anything else.

How can I make my email responsive to mobile devices?
One of the most crucial parts of email marketing nowadays is responsive email design. Previously, it was a Windows world, where compatibility wasn’t as important. While the world has changed, email marketing does not have to be more complicated.

On the contrary, with the correct email service provider, you may obtain complex capabilities like dragging and dropping information into responsive email layouts. Your marketing emails will look great on practically any platform thanks to the adaptable email templates.

You may also create your own template using resources offered by your email service provider. Creating your own responsive template provides unparalleled simplicity, flexibility, and independence. The ability to create your own template guarantees that your material remains fresh, distinctive, and inimitable. The greatest thing is that you can create fully working, responsive email templates in less than a minute using tools from industry leaders like Campaign Monitor.

Responsive email templates are efficient, simple to use, and inexpensive, making them the ideal method to make your emails mobile-friendly.

With these tools, you can send engaging emails that look just as well on mobile as they do on desktop.

Finish up
With these six crucial, simple-to-implement guidelines, you should be well on your way to sending mobile-friendly emails that your on-the-go readers will want to open and act on.