Emails Ineffective Without Responsive Web Design With the rise of mobile technology, more people are able to work on the go than ever before. You can check emails and respond to them from literally anywhere there's phone service. Most email marketing services that allow customers to design their own emails, like Mailchimp, have responsive email design automatically integrated into user created templates. However, the effectiveness of these responsive emails is almost null if they lead the target audience to a website without responsive web design. The importance of a responsive email that points to a mobile optimized website cannot be overstated. The Growth of Mobile Email Came Before Mobile Web Optimization The insane popularity of the Blackberry phone during the first decade of the 21st century, especially among businesses and professionals, gave rise to the need for mobile email. At first, emails were simple. However, as the Blackberry was eclipsed by the iPhone and other smartphones that could handle larger data loads in the form of images and small documents, email marketers and email marketing companies designed ever more elaborate emails optimized for the smartphone. This only increased as people began to visit websites and even make purchases on their mobile devices. We've now reached the point where 61% of emails were opened on a smartphone or tablet. This climb has actually preceded the emerging dominance of mobile as the main source of web traffic. The Rise of Mobile has Changed User Behavior The days of the old "pinch-and-zoom" are gone. Users no longer tolerate sites that are not optimized for mobile devices, as evidenced by the stark contrast in bounce rates (the amount of people who visit and immediate leave a website) between mobile optimized and traditional sites. Rest assured that you WILL lose out to your competition if your site isn't a responsive web portal and theirs is. of course there is a distinct difference between a 'mobile optimized' site and a 'responsive website design,' however they both have mobile traffic in mind. Read more here on the differences and how responsive web development works. The importance to ecommerce sites is even more pronounced as currently around 25% of ecommerce site visitors come and purchase from mobile devices. This trend is continuing to grow at a very fast rate. This is just for ecommerce sites. For other kinds of websites, mobile traffic can make up anywhere from one to two thirds of site traffic. If you're comfortable missing out on that amount of potential clients, customers or consumers, why do you bother having a website to begin with? Why Email Marketing is Useless Without Responsive Landing Pages Email is still one of the most effective forms of marketing, yet as more and more people use their mobile devices to interact with email services, responsive emails and mobile optimized landing pages are unequivocally necessary for email marketing to be remotely effective. Even mobile optimized coupons and special offers that do not necessarily lead to a website have significantly greater response rates when they are optimized for mobile. Optimizing your website for mobile devices is of prime importance if you want your business or organization to stay relevant in the digital sphere. How to Create Responsive Websites and Optimize for Mobile There are really two options for you to take advantage of these trends and make the most of your email marketing. Option one is that you can optimize the landing page (or the page that the email links the user who clicks a link to) only, which is an attractive option if you don't do too much email marketing and have only a few products or promotions. There are some services, like Landing Pages, that allow you to do this for free or a small fee and are generally easy to create and make modest customization. But be warned, unless you have a developer to associate the URL with your site, the URL will have landing pages in it. This is an issue because it erodes the credibility of the link and not as many people will be likely to click on it. The other option is to hire a company to create landing pages for you or, ideally. optimize your entire site for mobile. Why the entire site? When someone goes from the email to the landing page and then tries to visit another page on your site, you lose them. The best thing to do is have your entire site optimized for mobile devices. Nothing changes about your website except that it will be responsive, or react and re-size automatically, when someone visits from a mobile smartphone or tablet. This may sound pricey, but in reality its not that expensive as your website doesn't need extensive coding or design changes. Also, the investment is well worth it considering the potential payoff from the ever growing deluge of mobile visitors that increases sales and your bottom line. Clarity has designed responsive websites for many of our clients and has a combined 300 years of experience doing just that. Clarity works with your business to create custom online solutions designed specifically for your business and individual needs. Call Clarity Ventures today for a free consultation and let us help you take advantage of the mobile revolution!