Why you Should Use Mobile-Specific Content on your Emails
This is NOT about responsive design
As recent studies have shown, consumers tend to rely more and more on mobile with 67% of emails opened on mobile in the US for the first quarter of the year (source: Movable Ink’s US Consumer Device Preference Report). Consumers do not have the same behavior when they open your email on mobile than on desktop though.
Indeed, when opening your email on their mobile, they probably are on the go (on the tube, out with friends, etc.), busy doing something else and having a short attention span. Whereas, if they open it on desktop, they are more likely to be at home, with a nice internet connexion, a big screen and having more time to read your email and engage with it.
In order to send relevant emails, you need to adapt their content to each opener’s device in real time. And I’m not talking about responsive design — we are beyond that, I’m talking about a truly different content, one your recipients won’t see when opening this email on desktop. To do so, you can choose to display different images, call to actions or links depending on each opener’s device.
Typically, if you have a eCommerce website but also a mobile app, you could display different links depending on the device used to open your email. This would allow you to redirect the recipients opening on mobile to your app and the ones opening on desktop to your website.
Now, let’s say you are sending an email with a discount code. If you have a physical store and an eCommerce website, it could be interesting to display different images regarding the device at the moment-of-open (e.g. a text code redirecting to your website for desktop opens, and a barcode redirecting to the itinerary to the closest store for mobile opens).
Eventually, if you work in the travel industry for example, you do know that consumers are less likely to book a 15 days trip on their mobile than on desktop so you can display different call to actions depending on the moment-of-open device (e.g. “See the last offers” on mobile VS “Book your next trip” on desktop).
