This blog has been influenced by the research of Ross (2011) who is the creative strategist at e-Dialog International. He explains how the digital revolution means that mobile and social are now the most essential tools for marketers.
With the digital marketing industry being a rapidly changing one, I think it is important for companies to keep up to date with the latest technologies as their competition will be doing this! This includes the use of mobile marketing and social media.
E-mail campaigns still tend to be the less intrusive form of marketing, as I personally am still finding cookies very intrusive as I may have been looking at a holiday on Booking.com’s website and then when I go onto Facebook, there is an advert for it (And nowadays I tend to find an e-mail in my inbox as well). Although intrusive, this is clever marketing in my opinion, so definitely worth considering in a marketing strategy.
So what are the top tips for integrating social and mobile into email marketing campaigns?
1. Rendering is key
It is essential for your customer’s to be able view the e-mail correctly as what is viewed on a desktop will vary to that of a smaller phone screen! The Call To Action may be placed differently meaning it may not be as successful as initially thought. E-mails can be designed to open in different formats depending what device is used to open the e-mail, advances in HTML coding allow us to do this (Bluehornet, 2014).
Click image to enlarge
The smart phones above are capable of rendering e-mails intended for desktops but they still require scrolling and zooming-in for example, it is therefore much better to adapt e-mails intended for mobile user’s to optimise their use. It is easy to delete an e-mail due to a lack of readability. Having a mobile intended e-mail will eliminate these issues so consider this when creating an e-mail campaign (Bluehornet, 2014)!
Click image to enlarge
Although the majority of the content is the same in these two e-mails from Pizza Express, the mobile friendly e-mail has been adjusted to suit the mobile phone screen. This is shown in the right hand image. Pizza Express render their e-mails to ensure their customers always view it in the best possible layout and size. There are some differences which can be seen above but the CTA’s tend to be in the same place where attention is drawn to them. To improve, I think the mobile intended e-mail should also include links at the top to different parts of the website such as their menu and fresh offers.
2. Suitable Call To Action (CTA)
Often the Call To Action will vary depending on what device a user is using. For example for a university project I am looking at airlines and an e-mail opened on a desktop compared to a mobile may vary as users are less likely to book immediately on a mobile through the website but more likely to use the company’s app. Kurt Geiger always ensure their social media links are integrated into the e-mail… Recognise these symbols?
Each links to a different platform of social media enabling the user to share contents for example.
Integrating social media into e-mails may mean the CTA being to share content within that e-mail with their friends on social media. A CTA is the key connector between consumers and content and so is a key component of your campaign and also the campaign’s return on investment (Russell, 2012). Therefore it is important to get this right!
3. Integrate activity
To ensure success both the e-mail campaign and social media should be consistent with the marketing strategy. Launching a great new mobile app for your brand is not going to generate the desired result if no customers are driven to download it through a targeted to mobile device email campaign. So how is this done? The first step in creating a brilliant integrated campaign is often facilitating internal inter-departmental discussions (Ross, 2011).
Following these tips could really help with a mobile e-mail campaign and in my recent project at University, I have been considering this and realised how many elements there are to a e-mail campaign and to social media business success!
For further reading on mobile rendering, Bluehornet (2014) provides an excellent read into the considerations that need to be made (www.bit.ly/1D2ANpF).
References
Bluehornet, 2014. Responsive Design For Mobile Rendering, Minnesota: Digital River Inc.
Ross, E., 2011. How mobile and social can integrate with email. [Online]
Available at: http://bit.ly/1FXWHv1
[Accessed 19 April 2015].
Russell, K., 2012. Five Must-Have Elements of an Awesome Mobile Marketing Call to Action. [Online]
Available at: http://bit.ly/1OuBttl
[Accessed 19 April 2015].