Marketers Must Adapt Their Email Designs to Mobile and Facebook Messages

The first of its kind, this guide offers marketers valuable design recommendations for HTML, mobile and text emails, including specific best practice coding guidelines, to ensure marketers' emails meet the needs of consumers, perform well on mobile devices, achieve higher inbox deliverability rates, and optimize the user experience via email, mobile and social channels.

"Due to a lack of standards, and spotty HTML and CSS support, email design has always been considerably more challenging than website design," said Aaron Smith, Vice President of Campaign Services at Responsys. "Now, with the growing trend toward subscribers reading emails on mobile devices, there's a whole new set of design concerns."

"The rollout of Facebook's new messaging platform, Facebook Messages, will also start to significantly affect email design by boosting the importance of text email design," said Chad White, Research Director of Responsys. "Facebook Messages displays the text version of an email by default and we expect few subscribers to bother opening the HTML version. Marketers need to address this when planning their campaigns."

The Email Design & Coding Recommendations guide includes advice on:

• optimizing HTML email components such as the preheader, navigation bar, recovery module and footer, among others.


• mobile-friendly file sizes, email widths, button sizes and landing pages.


• elements to include and leave out of a text email, and how to handle calls-to-action.


• HTML and CSS coding to avoid and fixes to rendering issues caused by Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook 2007 and 2010, and the iPhone and iPad.

"The email environment is always in flux, with consumer habits constantly evolving and ISPs regularly rolling out new innovations," said Ed Henrich, Senior Vice President of Professional Services at Responsys. "This guide provides up-to-the-moment guidelines and recommendations that will help email marketers adapt to the key changes that will dominate 2011."

For more information on email design and coding best practices, download the Responsys 2011 Email Design & Coding Recommendations guide.

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