_This is Day Four of *5 Days To Optimize Your E-mail Messages*. You can catch up with “part one”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/12/05/5-days-to-optimize-your-email-messages, “part two”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/12/06/optimizing-for-different-email-clients, and “part three”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/12/07/optimizing-for-the-preview-pane._
More and more I am seeing people use their portable devices to access email. The Blackberry has been joined by Palm Treo devices, handhelds that work on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile platforms, and even cell phones that read email. But have you taken a look at how your email – or other marketers’ email – looks on these small, mainly text-based devices?
Since people use these devices to decide whether or not they will read your whole email (now or later, like when they are back at the office), or if they should delete it, it is extremely important you get some key information communicated clearly and within the context of how these devices display your message.
The main factors determining how messages render on these devices are similar to those for optimizing for the preview pane. You need to consider how your email looks as a text email and how your HTML email loads. If you are like me, you will be frustrated when the first part of an email is all HTML, URLs and graphics links.
Make sure you build your messages to top load with text content that indicates who the message is from and what it is about. Test what these messages look like. If you don’t have your own portable email device it is likely you know people who have them.
One little recommendation that I am hearing more and more is that we may be going back to having to offer recipients HTML or text subscriptions when they opt-in. If subscribers normally use portable devices or read their email in a non-graphical environment it is best that they can ask to receive “text only”.
Read about “Optimizing The Look Of Marketing E-mail” tomorrow in the final instalment of *5 Days To Optimize Your E-mail Messages*.