Email is not dead. In fact, email’s a huge part of your social media success. Those leads you’ve generated from well managed social campaigns frankly mean nothing if you’re not converting. Email takes the next step to keep your social relationships alive and well.

With 66% of your email prospects now opening their mail on a mobile device, you need to be making your messages mobile-savvy, super personal, and easy to click through.

To get the best conversions, try out these 21 tried-and-tested tips to optimize your mobile email marketing campaigns.

1. Make a trustworthy first impression – The “from” line in mobile emails is front and center.  Make your message personable and more likely to be opened by using the name of your Lead Salesperson, your Content Marketer, or your CEO. (Don’t send out a blanket mobile email with just your company name in the ‘from’ line.)

2. Show your face – Connect further with your reader through visuals. Include a dynamic headshot of the sender. Use a banner image with your sender’s face too, as not all mobile email platforms display your “from” image.

Image- Face Snapshot

3.Know your recipient – Segment your emails, and use unique collected data to personalize your message. Segment for sales funnel, demographics, source of email, This should be a standard practise, whether you’re targeting mobile users or not.

4. Use short, intriguing subject lines – Mobile readers spend less time per message. Those eye-catching subject lines are more urgent than ever if you want your email to stand out. Use action words, questions, and personal pronouns like “you”.

5. Pay attention to your preheader – Your preheader, or snippet text, shows up as the first ‘teaser’ text in most mobile email devices. Make the text above your header image an extension of your subject line. Use a clear call-to-action, content keywords, or questions.

6. Reduce image file size – Large images are a big no-no. Not only do they soak up your readers’ bandwidth, but not all mobile devices have images on as a default. Make sure your email displays quickly for those that do show.

7. Make scalable images – A work around the large image files is to create scalable visuals, optimized for mobile. That way, your photo shows up as the right size whether your recipient is using a phone, tablet or anything in between.

8. Use ‘text only’ – A/B test results of “text only” against “text and visual.” As not all mobile devices have images on as default for email, test out if your demographic responds better to the text only option on mobile.

9. Make a tappable CTA – Mobile readers are quick to respond. Make it easy with a clear, distinct CTA. If you’re using visuals, make your clickable image the optimal size of 44 x 44 pixels. If you’re using text only, make sure you use an easy-to-click link, and even make your font size slightly larger to make it stand out.

10. Create responsive email template – Use a CRM that enables you to design responsive templates, so your email looks good no matter the device or email service. (ie MailChimp, Constant Contact, etc.)

11. Don’t use Flash – Use HTML5 or CSS to make your content more user-friendly and scalable.

12. Write concise content – Attention spans are short on mobile. To get your message clicked-through, use short, witty, precise, actionable content. When crafting your email, draft out the message you want to convey, and then rewrite it 5 times. Use the most actionable content. Keep your word count under 60 for best results.

13.  Increase your font size – Make the readability of your email easy. Keep your short text large sized. Use at least 12 pixels for your content. If you are using text only, use 13 or 14 as your CTA font size.

14. Make your content skimmable – If you must have a lengthy text to get your message across, make the skim factor a priority. Keep your content in short sentences, with clear bolded headers, and simple bullet points. Make your message easy to get in a glance, and enticing to read-through.

15. Geo-target your market – Geo-targeting is becoming more and more essential. Use geographic list segmentation to target and personalize for your prospects, send timed emails (as in #17), or send out location based discounts. 

16.  Automate to keep top of mind – Automatically schedule your emails for both triggered and drip campaigns. If a prospect signs up for newsletter, set up a series of emails to nurture your lead, and bring them back with a CTA. Make sure your automated messages are mobile optimized.

 17. Test your times – When to send your emails is particularly crucial on mobile. You really just have a matter of 5 seconds (or less) to catch your readers’ attention. On mobile, your audience is less likely to scroll through the emails they’ve missed. Make sure you A/B test time of day, so your email hits the right inbox at the right time, in the right time zone (to reach your geo-targeted market).

18. Make sure your Landing Page is mobile optimized – As with any good email marketing campaign, your Landing Page needs to be consistent with your email content. On mobile, that means having a mobile optimized, scalable Page. Keep your CTA large enough to stand out on phones and tablets, but balanced with compelling information to get the coveted conversion. Keep the visuals on your email cohesive with the visuals on your Landing Page.

19. Use QR codes on signup pages – To generate leads directly via mobile, use QR codes on your marketing material. You can even use them to encode emails, to generate leads direct through handhelds.

20. Test on multiple devices – Always test your email marketing campaigns. Check out how your content, formatting, subject and pre-header cutoffs will appear on multiple devices. As a minimum, test out for iOS and Android. (note that iPhone users more readily read emails, with a 50% open rate; Android users account for a 14% open rate.

21. Measure your ROI – As always, track and monitor your opens, click-throughs and conversions. Use Jamie’s In-Depth Guide on How to Calculate the ROI of a Social Media Campaign to help calculate your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), and then determine your mobile email marketing ROI. Test to  identify and implement methods to decrease your costs of acquisition.

Try out these mobile email tactics to improve your conversion results. What other tips have you used? What’s your success rate?

About the Author:

Krista Bunskoek is the Content Marketer at Wishpond. She has written a number of online marketing ebooks like Influence Marketing and Website Contest and Promotions. You can reach Krista through her twitter handle @kbunskoek or her Google+ page.