Reading email on mobile: how important is it that it looks good?

I like email to look good for professional communications but between friends, I prefer what I call SSS (Short, Sweet and Simple).

I agree. It's very important that it looks good, this will get others to want to read what you have.

It's important to me, but I might not be the target group ;) In other words, first know your target group's used email client platforms, and then adjust email designs accordingly.

If there's a lot of mobile usage in your target group you might even start a special campaign, specifically for mobile devices: this could increase engagement because people will feel 'special' that you are sending 'dedicated for your X mobile device' mailings.

People love it when they feel special, after all.

Interesting question. I think there is a bit of generational bias in the answers. My take is the post 35 group is interested in how it looks, both from an aesthetic as well as a grammatical perspective. The younger employees are much looser are not as concerned about how the information looks, and in many cases are more forgiving of more informal presentations.

One challenge is translating data among different devices. Unless everyone in your target group is working with the same system, it is difficult (maybe impossible) to present information in a consistent manner. What may look good on one screen may not format as well on another device. In some cases, text may seem broken and odd characters may be inserted. So while one's goal may be to present data as cleanly as possible, that can be a high bar to reach.

I think in the world of the web - the look is make or break. Web users are very biased to streamlined experiences. That for me is a primary reason why people left Yahoo for Gmail. the standards of experience on mobile devices is even higher!

With the rise in SmartPhone use all across the planet, ensuring any data or communication you send out is optimized for mobile viewing is critical. It's easy enough to do (in some cases as simple as checking off a box before you send), but so many people choose not to do it. Laziness? Perhaps. But more likely it is a general lack of education on things like mobile device optimization.

But as a viewer, ask yourself how often you've received an email or been directed to a webpage and you can't read the content or see the images because it hasn't been formatted correctly for mobile viewing. Were you annoyed? Did you want to continue blindly thumbing your way through a poorly designed page? Probably not.

Some Marketers use the "stickiness" factor to measure how long browsers stay on their webpages. The stickier it is, the longer your customer stays, the more chance you have that they'll buy/contact you, etc. Perhaps we should start apply "sticky" methodology to our emails?

Cheers.

Internet usage on mobile is very specific and contextual. Because of this - Looks would be less important than content and speed of loading. Any content for mobile should be light weight and extremely focused. At the same time it should not be shabby or all over the place. Neatness and Brevity scores over aesthetics for sure.

It is more important than most of us realize.
I keep a page with different stats related to mobile email usage.
http://www.emailmonday.com/mobile-email-usage-statistics

A recent research into mobile email by Bluehornet asked:

"If you receive a mobile email that doesn't look good, what do you do?"
* Delete it (69,7%)
* Unsubscribe (18%)
* View on computer (17,7%)
* Don’t know (9,4%)
* Read anyway (7,6%)
* File it (3,5%)

This might not be the actual behavior with each and every email that doesn’t display well, but chances are that if your email sucks on mobile, it will get deleted. More important than we realize.

How your emails look on mobile devices is very important.

I think the next question would be - what kind of email are you sending? Are you talking about an HTML marketing email? An introduction email?

One you start answering some of these questions, you can best decide how to position your campaign for mobile.

You can't please everyone, but if you can make your campaign as simple yet effective as possible, that can help your outcome.

Think about your target, as well. If you're targeting sales executives, a short, text based email is the way to go. No one wants to scroll through nine paragraphs of text on their Blackberry.