Comments on: Optimizing Email for Mobile Devices

By: romano180

romano180 — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:50:43 +0000

I couldnt agree more with craig… combine your database of SMS and EMail. check out spongecell…and aweeber.. take some notes!

By: Justin Premick

Justin Premick — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:52:04 +0000

Bev,

You can do it, yes, but it’s not typical.

Most HTML email newsletters I see are fixed width. I’d say that’s because a fixed width generally allows you to plan a more consistent experience for the viewer across different email clients.

If you do elect to try a fluid width layout, test it thoroughly before going live with it.

By: Bev Hanna

Bev Hanna — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:16:10 +0000

Newbie here again…
Can you use a fluid html layout? Percentages rather than pixel width?

Thanks for your help

By: Justin Premick

Justin Premick — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 03:14:02 +0000

Hi Bev,

The 60-65 character width refers to plain text emails and is a best practice based on where email clients typically wrap those.

You could make your widths even shorter (since not all mobile devices will display that many characters per line) but you’d be doing so at the risk of sending excessively narrow emails to people who *aren’t* reading your emails on mobile devices but still prefer plain text over HTML.

Typical recommended maximum widths for HTML email range between 550 and 600 pixels.

By: Bev hanna

Bev hanna — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:55:20 +0000

I’m very new to newsletter marketing (trying to learn the basics before sending out my first ezine), and I’d like to know what is the maximum size to make my html layout. I’m using a 3-column format, incorporating our logo and background gradient, with the bulk of the text in the centre column. When you say 60-65 characters is the maximum width, does that mean the plain text maximum or the total width of the layout. What is the maximum width in pixels, or am I asking a nonsensical question?

By: Craig Dunn

Craig Dunn — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 13:00:22 +0000

Unfortunately when it comes ot marketing opinions are very often wrong. Case in point - the company who sat with their top marketing execs and showed them a hard copy piece of marketing material with five different backgrounds and ask their opinion on which back ground colour would work best - all of the execs went for the black background and commented on how the red background was garish. The V.P. decided that he’d test them all, all five colours. And you guessed it the RED one got the best response and made the most money. So don’t dismiss SMS so readily. I for one would love AWEBER to incorporate some kind of SMS facility into it’s current permission marketing tool and I’m sure others would too! We currently use another company for our opt-in SMS marketing but it would be so neater and would allow us to keep our data better managed if it was integrated into the current system.

By: Justin Premick

Justin Premick — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:58:13 +0000

David,

Unfortunately, if a sender omits a plain text version of a message, users of Blackberry, Palm and similar devices are left to choose between a sometimes unreadable HTML message and not reading at all. This is one of a number of reasons that we strongly recommend including a plain text version of all messages.

Re: SMS - In an opt-in model, it’s up to the subscriber to choose how/where to receive the information.

In my opinion, while some people may opt to receive subscriptions via SMS now, as email on your mobile gets easier and better (and it will), I don’t see the point of subscribing to a list via SMS, since you’ll be able to easily access your regular email address on your mobile.

By: David G

David G — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 22:42:37 +0000

Hi Justin,

I use a blackberry and can’t tell you how frustrating it can be trying to read a poorly planned HTML newsletter on the blackberry.

Do you see Aweber expanding into text messaging to mobiles?

Thanks for the tips.