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How To Design Your Email Messages For Mobile Devices

How To Design Your Email Messages For Mobile Devices

According to a 2007 study, 64% of key decision makers are reading your email messages on their Blackberries or PDAs. To grab their attention, and make sure your mail gets read, it's important to follow these guidelines:

Front load your subject line. The first 15 characters are key. On many PDAs, the subject line is truncated and your reader will only see the first 15-20 characters, so be sure to put the most important information at the beginning.

If your message is urgent, say so. Many people will use Blackberries as a supplemental email device. When they're out in the field, they'll scan through their inbox on their Blackberries, but they'll wait until they're back in the office to really delve into reading their email.

If it's critical that your message get read and acted upon immediately, add the words "Urgent" or "Due Today" to the beginning of your subject line. But, be considerate of your readers and only use this tactic when the message really is urgent. If you cry wolf too often, soon your messages won't be read at all.

Because you never know how your emails will be read, always compose your messages using multi-part MIME. Make sure the important text is at the beginning of the message. Current Blackberry devices have 320px wide displays - keep this in mind when designing your message.

Snub the prevailing advice - do not include your company name in the subject line. I've read more and more marketing experts suggesting that you include your company name at the very beginning of your subject line to aid in "branding". I must say, I totally disagree with this logic. If your "from" line is formatted properly, there is no need to waste the limited space in your subject line. Your subject line is too precious to include duplicated information.

If you're a B-to-B marketer, give readers the option to subscribe to the PDA version of your email, in addition to text-only or html options. Then design your email accordingly.

Remember, mobile users don't read, they scan. When checking their messages in their Blackberries, they'll be looking at cluttered rows of from fields and subject lines, and they'll make a quick decision as to which message is relevant. Anything you can do to ethically make your message stand out will improve your open and click-through rates. Try adding symbols like * or ^ but use sparingly to avoid spam filters. And use keywords that will stand out as your reader is scanning the inbox.

And, finally, be sure to test your message across multiple platforms.





How To Design Your Email Messages For Mobile Devices - To learn more about this author, visit Karen Scharf's Website.

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Jeff Foster
WebBizIdeas.com is a Minneapolis website design company founded to help people start an internet business by providing them with website, business, and internet resources that help foster the growth of successful online businesses and develop innovative Internet business ideas.  We specialize in internet consulting & internet marketing
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Kim Castle
With nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website

Staging Diva
Debra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start staging businesses. Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. Gould is the author of several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide. For more information about Debra Gould visit stagingdiva.com. - Visit Staging Diva's Website

Stephanie Robey
Stephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals.

She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com   Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences.  Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University.

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Karen Scharf
(Visit Karen's Website) Karen works with entrepreneurs who own high traffic websites and helps them implement split testing and optimization to recover the revenues they don't even realize they are leaving on the table.

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