These days, it seems as though mobile phones are attached to our hands.

With every pop-up notification and audible alert is the opportunity to wrangle in your auto customers and give them a seamless mobile email experience. Create effective dealer email marketing by considering a mobile-first approach.

In February 2016, Litmus announced mobile email opens increased to 55% in their market share data. So if more than half of your emails are being opened on mobile phones, how easy to read are they?

Put into your toolkit some of these important mobile considerations when creating any dealer email marketing.

Make It Look Good

One of the most important things to remember when drafting a mobile-friendly email is using a responsive layout. Making a responsive layout requires you to move content boxes into an easy-to-follow format. Make sure your email is no wider than 600 pixels for optimal readability on mobile devices.

If you aren’t creating responsive layouts already, you should prioritize this at the top of your to-do list. Readers will generally delete hard-to-read emails. 

Keep in mind when you are working on the design that it should flow. Balancing text and images is important as some email providers fail to automatically download images. If your email consists of only images, your reader might not see anything! 

Watch Your Text

An enlarged font size makes your email easier to read on a small mobile screen. Your font should be legible and a minimum of 14 pixels.

The all-important subject line should be thought through. Five tips to improve your subject lines include:

1. 1. Make it personal.
   2. Stay clear from spammy words.
   3. Keep it short.
   4. Ask a question.
   5. Apply a deadline.

And if you are like BarkPost, you might try sending an email to your customer’s dog. Since their dog doesn’t have opposable thumbs, your customer will want to open it for them:

Consider short copy for mobile. Users aren’t interested in lots of scrolling, and if they make it to the bottom of a long email, they might be tempted to unsubscribe. If you have a lot to say, add a “read more” button, and give the option of delving into the information more on a landing page.

The next consideration is who your email will be sent from. If you are sending a general email, use your company’s name. When sending a more personal email from someone like a CEO, use their name and company. 

Here is an example of an email I received and didn’t know who it was from until I opened it:

Practice Usability in Everything

When you send a test email, consider the “fold,” or where the email cuts off before someone has to scroll. If a call-to-action (CTA) is cut off by the screen size, it can look as if the email wasn’t carefully proofed. Apple recommends the minimum CTA button target area be 44 pixels by 44 pixels.

Don’t forget to include a footer with useful information, such as your company name, clickable address, clickable phone number, and social icons. Readers who have questions might call you for more information, while those who love your company will want to interact with you on social media. 

With Microsoft Outlook sitting in the Stone Age, make sure you also give contacts the option to view both a web version and a text version. When images download on some email clients, they can be skewed, enlarged, or resized. Outlook is the problem child of beautiful emails — but by providing Outlook users with web and HTML versions of your email, you can still get your point across.

Take these helpful tips back to your email campaigns. With the right messaging, they can help increase your engagement. Keeping mobile as top-of-mind awareness will help present easy-to-read, straight-to-the-point CTAs with clean and beautiful design.

Learn More About Dealer Email Marketing

Want to learn more ways to improve your dealer email marketing?

Contact 9 Clouds to request your digital audit. You will learn how to quickly improve your dealer email marketing efforts and have the chance to ask questions with us during our personalized digital audit phone call.