Email marketing on the run: Are fully mobile email tools the way of the future?
With the rise of mobile and increased use of mobile in the office, a time will come when a lot of an email marketer’s work will be done “on the run.”
Email marketers are getting used to accessing their web applications via mobile and will come to expect the same from their email marketing tools. But what does a mobile email marketing tool look like?
The necessity of a truly mobile email marketing tool
Most ESP systems are already easily accessible via the web. But now think about the full use of an email marketing tool via smartphones and tablets. And I am not talking about the recipients of your marketing messages and proper display of your emails on mobile. I mean the option for marketers to do everything on mobile – the whole process – in order to get the emails out the door and manage their email programs.
Does your email marketing tool need to be 100% mobile?
If you are on the road a lot or hopping from one meeting to another it might be very handy, or even required, to handle your email marketing tasks on the run. The mobile “want” is slowly becoming a “need.” Unless, of course, you want to be tethered to your desk forever.
Get the most important reports in a readable format
Checking in on vital email marketing reports and statistics is important to keep tabs on the email campaigns you just sent. Easy access to stats is also important when you need to quickly present campaign results when meeting with management or when working with designers and copywriters.
Crafting your marketing emails on a tablet
For now, smartphones present a real challenge to crafting proper emails, mainly due to the small screen and lack of easy text input. Tablets, however, could be used to – at least in part – create pretty darn interesting marketing emails. The main reason for this is that the overall interfaces of email marketing tools are getting easier to use. Drag-and-drop functionality is easier to transfer to a tablet interface.
A second reason this works is because of templated email designs. An email template takes care of the look, feel and function of the email, so you don’t need to do any HTML coding. Just add the text, images and links (content) of the email. These are tasks that can be performed pretty well on a tablet. Loading RSS feeds from your website, for instance, takes care of a lot of copying and pasting. Note that the touch screen needs a different and mainly bigger interface as opposed to the more accurate keyboard + mouse.
Planning, selections, testing and sending
Part of email marketers’ tasks is to actually press “send” or “submit,” but before that they must make database selections, plan the email and test it. If selections get very complex or variable content needs extensive testing, it would feel more comfortable to do so on a desktop computer, for now. But most email marketers actually keep it very simple. Testing how the email looks can be done via a render testing tool, which provides screenshots that can be easily checked on mobile devices.
Conclusion: Are we going mobile?
While t may be a while before all email marketing tools have all their functionalities become available via mobile, it’s not as far off as you might think. Some ESPs already have a descent app for iPhone/Android and a responsively designed email marketing tool that can be viewed on the go. Read more in this article about mobile email marketing must haves.
Image via Flickr
