Chief Marketer- Email Trends: The Importance of Tap Errors, Alt Tags and Mobile Design

Forty-eight percent of primary email opens today are on a mobile device, and 87% of C-level executives check the majority of their email via mobile. This means that both B2B and B2C marketers must make their emails mobile friendly if they want to succeed.

On Monday at DMA 2012 in Las Vegas, Jay Schewedelson, president and CEO of Worldata, shared his thoughts on mobile and other email marketing trends and tactics marketers should be considering now, as well as stats from Worldata’s own analysis of email campaigns for clients.

Avoid Tap Errors
The typical adult finger covers 45 pixels on a mobile screen, says Schwedelson. This means you must make sure your “call to action” buttons within your emails have proper padding space around them—at least 15 pixels.

Emails without 15 pixels of padding have a 28% lower conversion rate, because people are being taken to the wrong place on your website thanks to a “tap error”—they accidentally hit the wrong button and went to the wrong page.

Nearly one-third of all mobile clickthroughs are accountable as tap errors, and this can dramatically change the ROI of your email campaigns, notes Schwedelson, who pointed to Groupon and Living Social’s emails as excellent examples of how to properly design the buttons in your mobile email messages.

Simplify Your Landing Pages
Tap errors also happen on mobile landing pages, he added, so make sure those are designed in an easy to use format for mobile devices as well.

Email landing pages—and the information requested there—in general should be simplified, says Schwedelson. If your landing page has a form that takes long than a minute to be filled out, “you’ve got a major problem. Think about what you’re asking for and whether you really need it.

Alt Tags Matter
Adding alt tags and text is a simple step that many marketers skip—and it can lower your response rate by 14%, says Schwedelson.

Up to 67% of B2C recipients and 42% of B2B recipients will see disabled images in your email messages where alt tags could have been used. This is because many email clients disable images by default, he says. Alt tags and text can help direct your recipients where to click, even if they can’t see your images.

Urgency and Exclusivity
Email subject lines that create a sense of urgency and exclusivity can give you a 22% higher open rate.

The idea is obvious, when you think about certain consumer products that create a fever pitch of expectation, says Schwedelson. Women pay thousands of dollars for Hermes’ Birken handbags because they are so hard to get. And even though the all-important maps app doesn’t work on the iPhone 5, people still line up to buy them.

Phrases like “Secret Sale” or “For CMOs Only” can definitely increase your open rate. But make sure the exclusivity if believable for the recipient. Schwedelson noted that he had received an email from Lands’ End promising him access to a “private sale.” He then discovered that the sale wasn’t so private after all—the link in the email took him to the same screen he would have seen had he simply typed landsend.com into his browser.

Loading Quickly Counts
Redirect links that take longer than three seconds will lead to a 37% higher abandon rate, he notes. And those that take up to 5 seconds lose 47% of traffic.

Before you send your mailing, clean out your computer’s cache and check all your links to make sure they load quickly.

And remember to consider where those links take people after a limited-time offer ends. Thirty-four percent of clicks will happen 72 hours after an email drops, and the lifetime value of those who respond after an offer period ends is 200% higher than that of those who respond during the offer period.

“Your emails live forever,” so where you take them after an offer expires is crucial, says Schwedelson.