The Challenges Never End

I’ve mentioned in previous blogs that as a web developer, sometimes I begrudge email clients’ shortcomings. A variety of email clients render the same HTML code differently. This is something we must test for and take into account, making our code simpler; which isn’t a bad thing, but if not addressed, may limit our ability to market to all customers equally.

But a new challenge is hitting us at lightning speed – how do we advertise and test for those viewing a marketing email via a mobile device? It’s obvious that we should provide a text-only option to our emails, but not all campaigns lend themselves well to strictly text.

Mobile devices have different screen sizes, render content inconsistently compared to traditional email, and are usually not given the full-attention that a user might have when seated at their computer. This new technology will force us to rethink things like line-length, preview abilities, and even shortening URLs that may have tracking codes included in the length. So, although it’s good to have great content in a marketing email, mobile users may be more likely to ignore an email simply because to them, it appears too wordy or lengthy strictly because of the device they are using to view it.

I’m not sure exactly what the future will hold for testing email marketing on mobile devices. I know it’s something our company is thinking about and preparing for; but in a world with ever-changing technologies, how far ahead can we plan?