The Marketers Guide to

Emails on Mobile
The growth of email, mobile, and apps
Emails are the easiest way to directly contact customers, users, and
readers. They present an opportunity to place content directly in front of
your audience at any time of the day or night. Unlike social and paid,
where organic impressions have volatile ROI, email has been a reliable
channel for all marketers trying to drive revenue and engagement.
However, in the last 10 years, mobile has changed how consumers
interact with these emails.

The majority of emails are now opened on mobile devices, so it’s

paramount that marketers optimize for this shift in behavior. For
instance, if your links still send users to the mobile web, when that user
has your app installed, the user experience isn’t being optimized and
revenue is being lost. Our estimate - based on partner data - says that
businesses could be losing out on hundreds of thousands in revenue by
not optimizing emails for the mobile shift. In this guide to mobile emails,
we’ll break down the main problem behind why emails are so difficult to
perfect on mobile, and present the solution for how to fix them.
Contents

Intro 1

The Problem 4

The Solution 7

Example Implementation 13

The Future of Email 18

The Importance of Email Marketing
& Mobile Apps

1. Email marketing has the best ROI

Email marketing has traditionally had the best ROI of any

marketing channel. On average, every dollar you spend on email
has an ROI of $44, whereas other channels are less than half
that .

2. Email is an integral piece of your omnichannel strategy

Every company with a comprehensive digital marketing strategy

is covering the main customer touch points of email, ads, social,
web, and organic search; along with viral growth which is
powered by referrals or sharing. It can be a combination of
those initiatives that finally convinces a user to sign up or make
a purchase.

Sources:
https://www.eventbrite.com/blog/ds00-sell-out-your-next-event-in-record-time-with-email-marketing/
3. 69% of emails are opened on mobile devices

Many top brands have robust, and massive email lists

that they use as part of their broader marketing
strategy. Unfortunately, traditional email marketing is
not sufficient anymore. Today, 70% of emails are
opened on mobile devices and that share continues
to trend upwards. Any successful email marketing
strategy must take the mobile experience into
account.

4. Why drive users to a mobile app?

Not only are users spending more of their digital time

on mobile (the average user spends 4-5 hours per day
on mobile), but also, when those users are in your
app instead of your mobile website, they convert to
purchase 3x more often. And users spend 18x more
time in-app than on mobile sites.

That being said, if you are marketing to customers via

email, you can drive the highest ROI by providing a
seamless mobile experience that links users into your
app.

Sources:
http://go.movableink.com/device-report-2015-review.html
https://blog.branch.io/mobile-report-cheat-sheet-for-the-mary-meeker-internet-trend
https://www.internetretailer.com/2014/08/13/jackthreads-proves-deep-linking-e-mail-apps-boosts-sales
https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations-and-Whitepapers/2015/The-2015-US-Mobile-App-Report
The Problem
Fragmentation of the Email
Channel on Mobile

1. Inconsistencies between different platforms, email clients,

and devices

Once you decide to optimize your emails for mobile and mobile
apps, you start to realize how many challenges mobile presents
for email. Different platforms, email clients, and devices handle
emails differently, and the way they handle emails can change at
any moment. “Responsive” email design is stuck in the 2000s,
where you have to use complicated nested div and table
structures and inline styling (a taboo in contemporary web
design) to make emails look good on mobile.

2. Linking to the appropriate destination is near impossible

Linking into apps is much more difficult than linking to a

website. Unlike the web, there are no consistent standards on
mobile, and the methods for linking into iOS and Android apps
are different. They are even different between OS versions
within iOS or Android. Deep linking technology has solved this
problem. You can now link into mobile apps with ease, and even
direct users to the best possible user experience based on
whether or not they have your app already.

However, email is a different story. Email click tracking is

essential to measure ROI on email campaigns, and yet the link
wrapping that most email service providers use to track clicks
will break iOS’ Universal Links into an app. The choice email
marketers have had is to either turn off click tracking and have
no visibility into ROI for email, turn it on and break links into
apps for iOS users, or give up on linking into apps and lose out
on greater engagement and ROI potential.
ESP Linking Support
The Dynamic Between ESPs and
Deep Linking

1. The benefits of ESPs can come at a cost

Email service providers (ESPs) are a foundational part of email

marketing - no one sends marketing emails out from their
personal account anymore. ESPs help ensure deliverability by
appearing as a trusted sender, including support for white-
labeling. They also provide segmentation, personalization,
templating, and automation that saves time and increases ROI.
Many ESPs also offer analytics on opens, clicks, and ROI, but
these analytics come at the cost of breaking links into your app
on iOS.

2. The analytics ESPs provide cannot give the

complete picture

In a cross-platform world, where you are sending users on

mobile either to the app or mobile web, depending on whether
they have it installed, and users on desktop to your desktop
website, you need insight into how all of those linking
experiences and destinations are impacting ROI. This is essential
in order to make decisions about where to send users and
where to dedicate resources to improve the experience.
Unfortunately, even if an ESP goes beyond opens and clicks to
ROI measurement, no ESPs provide visibility into email
performance on the web versus in app. So, how can brands fix
the issue of mobile optimized emails?
The Solution
Make Your Emails Readable
on Mobile

1. The basics: use tables, inline styling, and short subjects

Because emails are stuck on old standards of HTML and CSS, the
best strategy for a responsive email is to use tables. When you
need them to wrap on mobile, nest your table in a div with a
width appropriate for mobile screens.

Linked stylesheets and even styling in the head section of an

HTML document does not work for email, so you must use inline
styling for each element you want to change. Finally, the subjects
that are visible on mobile are much shorter - try to limit your
subject to 35 characters, or make sure that the most important
part of the subject is within that limit.
2. Take advantage of responsive templates provided by ESPs

Instead of taking on the frustrating challenge of building your

own responsive email templates, instead use one of the many
templates provided by major ESPs like SendGrid, Responsys,
Salesforce, Sailthru, and more. Most offer drag and drop
template builders that look good on desktop as well as mobile:

• Unified experience + personalization with Sailthru, plus

mobile templates
• Responsive email templates with SendGrid
• Drag and drop content creation for mobile with Salesforce
• Cross-channel content builder with Responsys
Use Links That Will Work Anywhere

1. Links that perform across platforms, devices, and

email clients

Unfortunately, you cannot control where users will open your

emails. They could click on links in emails on Android in Gmail,
on iOS 9.2 in Apple Mail, or on a desktop using Outlook. The
links you put in your emails have to work in all of those contexts,
and they have to send users to the best experience. If users are
on mobile and have your app, they should be directly sent to
content in your app. If they do not have your app, they can be
sent to your mobile website, where you hopefully have a
method like Journeys that drives users to install your app. That
same link that sends users to app content on mobile should
work perfectly on desktop to send users to content on your
website.

To do all of this, you need to work with a linking infrastructure

provider that can handle all of these edge cases.
2. Links that support Universal Links and click tracking

Universal Links are the only way to link into apps on iOS, and
they provide the best experience because they open the app
immediately, without any browser redirect. Most ESPs do not
support iOS’ Universal Links because the way that they track
clicks: by wrapping your email links in a URL that logs the click in
their system, and then redirects to the link you provided - will
render a Universal Link useless. As a marketer, you cannot
launch an effective marketing campaign if you have no visibility
into whether users are clicking on your email links.

The only way you can currently support Universal Links and click
tracking is to use Branch’s integration with SendGrid, Responsys,
Sailthru, Salesforce, and others. Branch works with the ESP to
turn your email links into Universal Links, even if they are white-
labeled. Then Branch logs the click and sends it back to your ESP
so you can see your analytics in your ESP dashboard.
3. Links that support unified measurement

Branch links are flexible enough to send users to different

destinations depending on context, and also to track user
actions downstream at that destination. With email marketing
powered by Branch links, you can get a complete picture of
revenue from an email campaign on mobile web, desktop
web, and app. No matter where you decide to send your
users for the optimal experience, you will be able to capture
conversions downstream of the email click.
Test and Optimize

1. Set up an experiment

It’s probably not a surprise, but the secret to any successful email
marketing campaign is testing, and using test results to optimize
your emails for your content and your audience. To do this, you
need to set up an experiment with a control group that is
consistent with your normal marketing emails, and a test group
that adjusts one or more variables that you want to see results for.

For instance, you could run a series of tests that compare the
performance of your standard emails to an email with a shorter
subject, responsive design, or deep links into your app. Tests are
also a great way to determine what content and format resonates
best with your audience. At the end, you want to compare the
performance of the test group to the control group, in terms of
clicks, purchases, revenue, or another metric that your team cares
about.

2. Easy testing with ESPs

Most major ESPs provide an easy way to A/B test the performance
of your marketing campaigns.

• Testing with Sailthru

• Testing with Responsys
• Testing with Salesforce
Example
Implementation
Before: A Standard Email

A very basic email link looks something like this:

<a
href="https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/five-spice-chicken-vermicelli-with-mushrooms-collard-
greens-baby-fennel">I want it!
</a>

It is exactly the same as a link in a regular HTML webpage.

If your users click a link like this in an email on mobile,
they will we directed to a page on your website.

You will also only have visibility into conversions from

email on web, and many ESPs only provide insight into
opens and clicks - no downstream user activity driven by
the email.
After: An Email Optimized for Mobile

1. Adding Responsive Design

In email, you cannot use linked stylesheets or styling in

the head section of your email and expect the styling to
work on every platform, device, and email client. You also
cannot necessarily expect styling on an element to
propagate to its child elements, like in regular HTML.
Instead you need to use inline styling for each element
like this:

<a style="border-radius: 4px; display: inline-block; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-
height: 24px; padding: 12px 24px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none !important;
transition: all 0.1s ease-in; color: #fff; background-color: #00afd1; font-family: sans-serif;"
href="https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/five-spice-chicken-vermicelli-with-mushrooms-
collard-greens-baby-fennel">I want it!</a>
2. Turning Regular Email Links into Deep Links

If you sign up for Branch’s Deep Linked Email with

Responsys, SendGrid, Sailthru, Salesforce, or one of the
other ESPs we support, and complete the one-time setup
steps, you will be ready to convert your email links into
deep links into your app. Link format is a little different
for each ESP we work with. For example, your final
SendGrid link will be something like this:

<a style="border-radius: 4px; display: inline-block; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-
height: 24px; padding: 12px 24px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none !important;
transition: all 0.1s ease-in; color: #fff; background-color: #00afd1; font-family: sans-serif;"
href=""https://vza3.app.link/3p?
%243p=e_sg&%24original_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blueapron.com%2Frecipes%2Ffive-
spice-chicken-vermicelli-with-mushrooms-collard-greens-baby-fennel">I want it!</a>

Branch also provide scripts, guides, and other tools to

help you convert your email templates into deep linked
templates.
3. Testing and Optimizing

Once you have your mobile-optimized email ready, you will want
to conduct a test. You could use these control and test groups:

You will also need to decide how to measure performance. One

suggestion is to look at clicks, purchases, and revenue across
web and app for your control and test groups:

If you want to see app and web performance from deep linked
email campaigns, you will need to set up revenue or event
tracking on web and in app with Branch.
4. Measuring performance

Once you have your test results, you will want to ask:

What was the total purchase value for the test group when compared to
the control group? Were more total purchases captured in the test
group than the control group?

Instacart saw a 6x increase in purchases for app users when they

converted to deep linked email. You can do this comparison yourself in
the Branch dashboard, complete with web versus app performance,
downstream conversion events, and revenue.

5. Improved user experience

Instacart drives link clicks in emails to their app, and this is what the
experience looks like when users click in the mobile-optimized email:
The Future
of Email
This guide walks you through what you can do to optimize
your emails for mobile today, but what’s next for email?

Users will increasingly expect the experience they prefer

(being taken to the app if they have it), meaning email
marketing has to catch up with user expectations to
maintain ROI.

Advances in machine learning and user identification will

make personalized, consistent messaging more
widespread across all email service providers, and even
across all marketing channels.

Visibility into conversions across platforms and channels

will become more unified, so that marketers can see all
their analytics for all channels in one place.

Fragmentation of the email channel and siloing of

marketing channels in general is a challenge for marketers
now. And unified experiences and measurement across all
of these channels is the way forward.