It’s Americans’ No. 1 online activity. It’s the top sharing channel in the world. The preferred tool for business communications.

It’s email. And — averaging a 4,300% ROI, according to the Direct Marketing Association — this 45-year-old channel may well be your most productive marketing tool.

But the competition for attention in the inbox is fierce. And that return is an opportunity — not a promise.

To take advantage of this powerful channel, you’ll need to overcome huge obstacles to getting recipients to open, click, read, share and act on your message. Before crafting your next email marketing campaign, here are some of the problems to be aware of:

1. Competition is fierce in the inbox.

You already know your recipients have too much to read and no time to read it.

But that problem multiplies with emailing campaigns. With 306.4 billion emails being sent and received each day (The Radicati Group)^[1] the battle for attention in the inbox is real.

People have, on average, 276 unread messages in their inboxes. That’s a 300% increase in just four years.

— Nielsen Norman Group

You’ve read the numbers:

• American professionals receive an average of 121 emails a day (The Radicati Group).^[2]
• That’s per inbox. Now multiply that by the several personal email accounts people tend to have in addition to a primary work account (Nielsen Norman Group).^[3]
• No wonder 68% of those emails aren’t getting opened. And an average of 276 emails languish unread in inboxes at any given time (NNG).^[4] That’s an increase of 300% in just four years.

Plus, now recipients are getting pickier about which brand emails they’ll receive in the first place (NNG).^[5] If they don’t perceive yours to be best in class, they’ll turn to your competitor’s better email newsletter and unsubscribe from or delete yours.

And not only are you competing with other email marketing copy for your reader’s time. You’re also competing with favorite sites, mobile apps, personalized homepages, blog posts, content marketing, news digests, search and social media.

Want to get opened? Address “the envelope” — the four elements, including the email subject line, that recipients use to determine whether to open or delete emails — carefully.

2. They’re reading on their phones.

Two-thirds of email recipients open your email on their smartphones, not their laptops (Adestra).^[6] Three-quarters most often check their messages on mobile devices (Fluent).^[7]

More than half of consumers have unsubscribed from a brand’s promotional emails because they didn’t work well on mobile.

— Litmus State of Email Report

Some 7% read your email newsletters in the bathroom (NNG).^[8] And the other 93% are lying.

Problem is, reading your email newsletter on the small screen is like reading War and Peace through a keyhole. It’s not easy to get the word out on a 3”x6” rectangle.

Mobile reading reduces everything from comprehension to clicks. When reading emails on their mobile devices, recipients:

• Click 40% less often (Mailchimp).^[9] They also click on fewer links. There go your click-through rates. There go your landing page hits.
• Find it 48% harder to understand content (R.I. Singh, et al., University of Alberta).^[10]
• Become more likely to unsubscribe. If your message doesn’t work on smartphones, say goodbye to prospects. More than half of consumers have unsubscribed from a brand’s promotional emails because they didn’t work well on mobile (Litmus).^[11]

How’re we doing at mobile email? Some 4 in 10 find marketing emails to be poorly designed for mobile devices (250OK and 42labs).^[12] And more than one-quarter find “how it fits my screen” an important element of email design.

Subscribers rate the ease of reading email on mobile devices 3.3/7 — aka miserable.

— Nielsen Norman Group

Bottom line: Subscribers rate the ease of reading email on mobile devices 3.3/7 — aka miserable (NNG).^[13]

Want to get your email message across on the small screen? Write more readable copy, prioritize links carefully — and don’t forget mobile-responsive email design.

3. They’re just not that into you.

Want an inside peek at what your email recipients and subscribers are saying behind your back?

No. 1 reason they unsubscribe? Because you talk about yourself too much, and not enough about them. Two-thirds of recipients quit brand emails for this reason (#LyrisROI).^[14] (So much for your marketing strategy and conversion rate.)

Spam is no longer just unsolicited email. It also includes emails recipients did sign up for — but which now strike them as irrelevant, impersonal or too frequent.

Some 74% find you irritating because you don’t give them targeted information they want or need (Janrain).^[15]

Plus, bore subscribers, and they’ll report you as a spammer. Spam no longer means just unsolicited email (NNG).^[16] It also includes emails recipients did sign up for — but which now strike them as irrelevant, impersonal or too frequent.

Want to make it through the mind filter? Write an email that covers news your recipients can use to live their lives better.

4. They don’t have much time.

Let’s assume people on your email list do open your email message. Recipients spend an average of just 11 seconds on each email they review (NNG).^[17] That’s enough time to read about 37 words.

No wonder the No. 1 piece of advice email recipients give email copywriters is to keep it short.

Consider the numbers:

• People skim 69% of their email newsletters; they read only 19%. (That’s the good news. On mobile, they skim 74% of their email newsletters.)^[18] In this environment, how do you reach the three-quarters of subscribers who don’t read your paragraphs?
• The No. 1 activity for mobile users is wasting time. But mobile users get “visibly angry” at verbose e-zines that waste their time.^[19] How do you avoid enraging readers with walls of words?
• Recipients are irritated by e-zines with too much information — and by those that don’t offer enough.^[20] So how much is just right?

Want to reach the three-quarters of email recipients who don’t read paragraphs? Keep emails short. And lift ideas off the screen with display copy.

How to write good marketing emails

In this environment, how do you write good emails that get opened, clicked, read and acted upon? Learn how to overcome the obstacles of reaching readers in the inbox to take advantage of the huge and growing return on email marketing.

______

Sources:

“2017 State of Email Report,” Litmus

“Impact of Mobile Use on Email Engagement,” MailChimp, May 5, 2017 (updated Aug. 8, 2017)

“The Inbox report: Consumer perceptions of email,” Fluent, 2018

“Top 10 Email Clients in March 2019,” Adestra, March 2019

“What recipients really think about your email marketing designs,” 250OK and 42labs, 2018

Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade and Jakob Nielsen; Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6th Edition; Nielsen Norman Group; 2017

R.I. Singh, M. Sumeeth, and J. Miller: “Evaluating the Readability of Privacy Policies in Mobile Environments,” International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 55–78

“Online Consumers Fed Up with Irrelevant Content on Favorite Websites, According to Janrain Study: National Survey Reveals Up to Two-Thirds of Adults Would Leave a Site if Shown Wrong Ad,” Janrain, July 31, 2013

Appendix

^[1] Email Statistics Report, 2020-2024 (PDF), The Radicati Group, January 2020

^[2] The Radicati Group

^[3] Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade and Jakob Nielsen; Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6th Edition; Nielsen Norman Group; 2017

^[4] Flaherty et al.

^[5] Flaherty et al.

^[6] “Top 10 Email Clients in March 2019,” Adestra, March 2019

^[7] “The Inbox report: Consumer perceptions of email,” Fluent, 2018

^[8] Flaherty et al.

^[9] “Impact of Mobile Use on Email Engagement,” MailChimp, May 5, 2017 (updated Aug. 8, 2017)

^[10] R.I. Singh, M. Sumeeth, and J. Miller: “Evaluating the Readability of Privacy Policies in Mobile Environments,” International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 55–78

^[11] “2017 State of Email Report,” Litmus

^[12] “What recipients really think about your email marketing designs,” 250OK and 42labs, 2018

^[13] Flaherty et al.

^[14] “2017 State of Email Report,” Litmus

^[15] “Online Consumers Fed Up with Irrelevant Content on Favorite Websites, According to Janrain Study: National Survey Reveals Up to Two-Thirds of Adults Would Leave a Site if Shown Wrong Ad,” Janrain, July 31, 2013

^[16] Flaherty et al.

^[17] Flaherty et al.

^[18] Flaherty et al.

^[19] Flaherty et al.

^[20] Flaherty et al.

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Reading your web page on a smartphone is like reading War and Peace through a keyhole.

It’s not easy to reach readers on mobile devices. The small screen size, touchscreen and more add up to a lot of usability issues.

Here, according to Raluca Budiu and Jakob Nielsen, authors of User Experience for Mobile Applications and Websites, are 5 obstacles to look out for when writing for the mobile web:

1. Screen size

Smartphones have touchscreens that are about 3.5-x-6.5-inches large, according to Budiu and Nielsen’s definition. That’s a tiny window through which your visitors see your web pages, blog posts, news releases and social media status updates.

That means that the content displayed above the fold on a 30-inch monitor requires five screens on a smartphone. As a result, mobile web visitors must:

• Work harder to get the same amount of information
• Remember information that isn’t visible on the small screen

That adds up to a lot of cognitive overload. As a result, reading on a mobile device cuts comprehension in half, according to research by R.I. Singh and colleagues from the University of Alberta.

Small screen size also means that every pixel of mobile screen real estate is as valuable as Central Park-facing real estate.

“Whenever you include a new design element or a new piece of content on the mobile screen, something else gets pushed out (or below the fold),” write Budiu and Nielsen. “Think hard of the opportunity cost of each new element: What does it mean for the users if you leave out element B in order to include element A? Is element A more important than element B?”

2. Portable and interruptible

Because every mobile phone is designed to fit in a pocket or a purse, people use them anywhere and everywhere.

But communication on the go is difficult, because mobile web visitors are likely to get interrupted at any moment. They’re cooling their heels with your blog post at the doctor’s office — when their name is called. They’re looking up the date of your webinar in the grocery line — when it’s their turn to step up to the cash register.

The result of these interruptions: Attention spans on mobile devices are half as long as on desktops, according to a Mobile HCI study (PDF):

• Average desktop session duration: 150 seconds
• Average mobile session duration: 72 seconds

“Because attention is fragmented, strive to show users what they need as soon as possible),” write Budiu and Nielsen. “Flooding them with details and asking them to parse walls of text for relevant facts is not interruption friendly. The gist should always come before the minutiae. A simple task is easier to finish quickly. It’s also easier to resume than one with many steps and alternatives.”

3. Single window

Most mobile visitors can see only a single window on their phones. They can’t split screens or work with two apps at once.

Imagine your visitors trying to pick up information from one app to paste into your online form in another app. Or going back and forth between web pages to get the context they need to follow your line of thought. Or taking notes with a pen and paper so they can get something from Screen A to Screen B.

Don’t make that happen.

4. Touchscreen

Two words: fat fingers.

“Not only is the screen smaller than a laptop or desktop screen),” write Budiu and Nielsen, “but design elements need to be larger than those on a regular monitor.”

5. Variable connectivity

I don’t have to tell you that — even in the era of fast cellular networks and ubiquitous Wi-Fi — coverage is not universally good.

In an environment where connectivity issues are a given, “every new page load translates into a significant waiting time when the network does not cooperate,” write Budiu and Nielsen.

• Mind the load time: Think light page designs that contain as much information as possible.
• Reduce the number page loads: Put full stories and sets of instructions on single pages. And, you know those Top 25 stories that are essentially images and captions, strung along 25 different web pages? Stop that.

How to reach readers on mobile sites

All of these obstacles can add up to a difficult mobile experience. In fact, Budiu and Nielsen have seen a 294% increase in mobile usability guidelines, from 85 to 335, since the first iPhone was released in June 2007.

To overcome these obstacles to getting the word out via mobile devices:

• Get To the Point Faster: Put the hot stuff up top for mobile.
• Chunk It Up: Prioritize page content and defer secondary and tertiary material.
• Design for Mobile: Create large, spaced out links and other touch targets for fat fingers. Minimize page size and the number of page loads.
• Cut Through the Clutter for Mobile: Make every piece you write easier to read and understand.
• Lift Ideas Off the Mobile Screen: Give the gist of your story to skimmers and scanners through microcontent.

That’s essential. Because mobile usability is harder to achieve than desktop or laptop usability.

“What’s slightly annoying” on a desktop, write Budiu and Nielsen, “is overwhelming” on a smartphone.

How can you provide a good mobile user experience through your visitor’s 3.5-by-6.5-inch window onto your world?

___

Sources: Raluca Budiu and Jakob Nielsen; User Experience for Mobile Applications and Websites: Design Guidelines for Improving the Usability of Mobile Sites and Apps; 3rd edition; Nielsen Norman Group; 2015

R.I. Singh, M. Sumeeth, and J. Miller: “Evaluating the Readability of Privacy Policies in Mobile Environments,” International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 55–78.

M. Bohmer, B. Hecht, J. Schoning, A. Kruger, G. Bauer; “Falling asleep with Angry Birds, Facebook and Kindle — A large scale study on mobile application usage,” Mobile HCI 2011

Jakob Nielsen, “Mobile Content Is Twice as Difficult,” Alertbox, Feb. 28, 2011

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