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@jefffis
Last active September 9, 2015 18:26
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Why mobile-first emails

Websites went mobile-first years ago, it's time emails do too

  • anywhere from 50% to 60% of emails opened on mobile devices
  • our lists are probably 50% or so mobile
  • our email revenue is MORE THAN 50% from mobile
  • all this and our emails are not mobile-first
    • by this, I mean that when viewed on a mobile device, users still need to pinch and zoom to see the details of of said email

So what can we do?

  • single column layouts work wonders -- with some HTML markup trickery we can adjust these to be two/three+ columns on tablets & desktop email clients
  • use HTML + CSSL for important CTAs and text -- this way users don't need to click to view images, or wait to download them if it's one / many large images
  • use HTML + CSS + images for item modules (& any other type of content) so that emails adapt naturally to email clients and remove the need for users to zoom to read the text properly
  • use HTML + CSS for bullet-proof buttons, and text links to remove any issues with image downloading and to remove the need to zoom to see / tap on links or buttons
  • new general marketing email, as an example
  • draft listing email with item modules using HTML + CSS

Advanced Tech

  • email stinks for the most part in terms of tech, but mobile devices do have the best support (for the most part -- Gmail for Mobile!!!), so we can take advantage of this
    • if we know a user is on an iPhone, we can include a link to open the app if we want to (we'd need to work with for support for this), but it's pretty nifty
  • we can do some advanced designs with mobile -- such as background images / video, as well as live-updating content (for example a live tweet of some event)
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