Can You Preview on All Devices?

Once you've identified the devices and clients your recipients are using — and decided which ones you're going to optimize for — you need to make sure you can preview how your emails will appear on them. Many email service providers integrate this feature (usually called "Inbox Preview" or "Inbox Test") - although in some cases it's a premium feature that costs more expensive to activate - and it will show you how your emails look across different devices, clients and browsers. If your ESP doesn't have this feature, you can use a separate email preview tool like Inbox Inspector, Litmus, or Inbox on Acid. TestSubject by Zurb is another useful tool that lets you test Image Masking Service how your email subject lines, sender name, and pre-header text appear on mobile devices and clients. common emails. Do you have adequate support at hand? While good email technology can do the heavy lifting when it comes to optimizing your email for mobile, if you're serious about a mobile-first email strategy, you won't. you may not be able to avoid familiarizing yourself with your e-mails. coded.

Lots of tricks that will make your emails work well on mobile, like image substitution - which will serve a different version of an image to smartphone users than desktop users - or using progressive disclosure , which will hide content behind a button or link, usefully shorten your content for smaller screens - requiring you to directly edit the HTML or CSS of your email. If you're not a confident coder, this can seem daunting, so make sure you have the support handy. Ideally, your email service provider should have good support anyway, but be sure to consider how well they can support any coding adventures you might want to embark on. Do some research on the types of features you would like to try implementing and as you do, you can find out if your ESP already has features that can support them. And if not… it might be time to look for a new email provider. If you enjoyed this article, check out some of the other great content from our “The Future of Email Marketing” series: How Lonely Planet used email to launch its new homepage How artificial intelligence is changing email marketing How Rich Media Can Bring Your Emails to Life How fashion brand Thread is delivering hyper-personalized emails at scale Do brands still need bulk messaging software?