On the Subject of Mobile
Posted by Dave McCue on July 23rd, 2012
“By the end of 2012, more people will be reading emails on a mobile device than on the desktop or on webmail.” – ReturnPath
Many marketers hear a prediction like that and immediately start thinking about how their emails look on mobile devices. While mobile devices present a number of challenges when it comes to displaying messages, it’s easy to forget about the impact a mobile device can have on your subject lines.
The Test
Harland Clarke Digital tested the same subject line on messages sent to a variety of devices. The results made clear the importance of keeping subject lines as direct as possible.
The Results
In a word — truncated. While our subject line was only 48 characters long (including spaces) it was not fully displayed on any of our mobile devices.
Our subject line:
A Better Way to Communicate with Account Holders
Here’s what we saw, by device:
| iPad® 2 A Better Way to Communicate with Acc…  |
| iPod touch® A Better Way to Communicate with…  |
| iPhone® 4S A Better Way to Communicate with…  |
| Android® (HTC Desire™ 2) A Better Way to Communicate with Acc…  |
| Blackberry® Bold™ 9000 A Better Way to Communicate with Acco…  |
In our tests, the Blackberry displayed the most characters from our subject line with 38, while the iPhone/iPod allowed the fewest with 32. Our original subject line was 48 characters, meaning over 25% of our subject line was being cut off on average across these devices. It’s also interesting to note the role of pre-header text in the inbox display of these devices, where a larger number of characters were displayed in comparison to the subject lines.
Recommendations
Of course, testing across multiple devices is the best way to see the impact on your subject lines. As a general rule of thumb, the more concise you can make your subject line, the less potential you’ll have for issues on mobile devices. If truncation doesn’t sound like a big deal, remember that the point of truncation will vary across devices (as our test showed). Imagine a subject line such as “Great new products you can’t afford to miss!” trimmed down to 35 characters — ”Great new products you can’t afford…” This example, while embarrassing, is fairly tame in comparison to what can happen when the subject line is cut off in such a way that it becomes lewd, profane or anything else that could end up on someone’s blog.
This is great information! Thank you for this. Can you also give some insight on how the look and feed of emails are affected on different mobile devices?
Chris – there a number of ways mobile devices can affect emails. Blackberry devices, for example, typically disable images in emails by default, making “alt” text an important consideration when using images in your messages. Spacing is important as well, especially for touchscreen users, because it can be difficult to accurately click links if those links are too close together. Some marketers have moved to a single-column email design specifically to accommodate mobile users. With so many devices out there, it’s important to be doing as much mobile testing as possible to make sure your messages are providing a positive experience for your mobile audience.
SubscriberMail now has Inbox Experience that allows you to test your message by rendering it in a variety of platforms. You can actually see how your message will look on different mobile devices.