70% of users today say that if the email doesn’t render properly on their smartphone device, they will immediately delete said email without reading it. This statistic shows how important email testing has become in the process of sending out your email marketing campaign; you have to be confident that once a recipient opens the email, no matter what device that may be on, the email looks the same as the one you intended them to see.
Email marketing works because companies want to be able to communicate directly with customers, sending information straight into their inbox, ensuring they see the details you wanted them to see. In a survey by Acxiom, “73% of respondents said they preferred email to direct mail, text messages or a combination of channels.” Email marketing remains to be the strand of marketing that weaves all the channels together; social networking etc. undoubtably work but it’s easy to be overlooked when peoples news-feeds are constantly being refreshed with more and more content and so, to have a complete strategy, email marketing serves a specific purpose that cannot be overlooked.
We recently sent out an email campaign, and whilst testing it, we realised it was a worthwhile subject to blog about so more people know how to test their emails to prevent the problems caused if you don’t- the email not rendering properly, any last minute spelling errors or, when you see the final result realising that that photo doesn’t look quite right there. All solvable issues, but once it’s been sent and you open it in your inbox, it becomes an irritant that it’s already been delivered to your email lists and it’s too late to fix them- which is where Email on Acid comes in.
Since everyone these days has a different operating system, device or programme they are opening the email on, Email on Acid allows you to open your email on each device and see what it will look like to a customer using that particular device viewing your content. From desktop to mobile and tablets, it’s great to be safe in the knowledge your email that you’ve worked hard on won’t be overlooked just because of devices distorting it. When we read it our emails on this, we realised we wanted to change the subject line and the first image the customer will see, again, ensuring improvement and meaning we were much happier when sending the final email.
Viewing the email like you would on a tablet or smartphone reinforces the fact that you can’t have too much text on an email- you need to give information and lead them to your website, not give every piece of information about the business you have into the email; it’s not an essay. According to the National Center for Biotechnology information, you have approx. 8.25 seconds to capture attention, with emails only being opened on someones screen for 15-20 seconds; in this time they decide whether to read on and find out more, or click off it and put you to the back of their minds.
There may be other great services like Email on Acid, this is just the one we personally use, so we wanted to share the message!
