Your email marketing audience is changing. The number of people retrieving your email on smartphones and other Web enabled devices is growing every day. How big does this segment need to get before designing specifically for these devices becomes a major consideration?

The problem HTML email designers face is that there are considerable differences between the PC and the smartphone user experience. Unique limitations and parameters are created by a relatively small screen and touch-screen interactivity on new mobile devices. Because of this, an email designed only for the more traditional PC audience may not display optimally on a smartphone.

If you want your email marketing campaigns to really shine on mobile devices there are a few methods that you can consider.

Link to Smartphone Version

One method for dealing with mobile devices in the past has been to create email layouts targeting PC clients that then provide a link to a mobile version. Mobile device email clients were primitive and displayed HTML or graphical elements very poorly, if at all. Links to mobile versions usually opened up text-only documents - no images, no HTML, no fun.

What if you took this idea and adapted it to the new world of "smart" HTML-savvy phones? An alternate HTML version of your email marketing could be created specifically for these devices and placed on the Web. This version could be formatted specifically to deal with the limitations and work within the parameters of smartphones.

Email Design for the Smallest Screen

Many websites are designed at fixed widths such that, when viewed by the majority of PC users, the entire website fits from side to side in the browser. On larger resolution screens, the website floats in the browser window. It's debatable whether the potential empty space on the sides is "wasted" or not. Just how wide can you make that website before text columns get too wide to read, elements become too spread out and unbalanced? We've come to accept this one size fits all approach; it's the industry standard in Web design.

Taking this approach to the HTML email medium would mean designing email marketing significantly more narrow than our current 600 pixel wide standard. To cater to the new breed of mobile devices, text, link and button sizes might also need to be increased to accommodate for small screens and fat fingers (no offense, that's just what people are calling it). Anna Yeaman of Style Campaign has experimented with what she calls the "skinny approach" to email design.

For email messages with limited content, this is a great solution. The same emphasis on keeping vital information above the fold should apply - for the short and sweet email this shouldn't be a problem. But what about longer email messages, e-newsletters for example? Most savvy email marketers already know to cut content down for the quick reads and short attention spans of their email audience. How much more can you cut down on your message before there is a negative impact on effectiveness? Or conversely, how deep can you make email content before scrolling becomes a real problem? That threshold varies depending on the email purpose, the audience, and the e-marketer. Conforming to a smartphone's screen width may cross that line and be too restrictive for some longer email marketing messages.

Email Designs That Expand and Contract to Fill the Screen

Borrowing again from the world of the Web, an email can be designed to adapt to the width of the viewer’s screen. Many websites that are heavy on content and tabular data have employed this approach to utilize all of the available browser real-estate.

Just like the Web, text in HTML email can easily be made to wrap to fit smaller screens. Tables and images can be set to expand and contract. The article Fluid mobile email design (part 4) by Anna Yeaman of Style Campaign shows that there are great possibilities for adaptive layouts.

This method would work best for email layouts that are simplified both in structure (basic layouts that don't require complex builds) and in design (limited graphical embellishment). In general the more complex the layout, the more likely it will look broken when resized. Test your email layouts thoroughly and be prepared for design changes.

A New World Still in Flux

Content development for the mobile medium is so new that the "industry standard" hasn't been set yet. It will take some time before email marketers agree on an acceptable method of dealing with this two-format dilemma. While we wait for an answer, there will be much trial and error. We need to find ways to turn this problem into an impetus for creative solutions.

About the Author:

Dean Silvestri is Marketing Creative Director at Lyris.