Can’t get enough of mobile? Yeah, neither can we. While we already offer testing on numerous mobile devices, including Android, Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, Symbian, and Windows Phone 7.5 (full list here), we realized that there was a mobile niche that we were missing—mobile webmails.
Not all mobile users use the native mail application on their phones. In fact, there are many different apps, like the Gmail app for iPhone, or the Outlook.com app for Android, that mobile users can use to check their emails. In addition, some users even open up the browser on their mobile phone to use webmail clients (like Gmail) to read email. Since rendering can vary—sometimes drastically—in each of these scenarios, it’s important to cover all your bases.
So what’s new?
We’ve added mobile webmail email rendering testing for the three biggest webmail clients, shown in the Android browser:
- Gmail (Android Browser)
- Outlook.com (Android Browser)
- Yahoo! Mail (Android Browser)
iPhone webmail testing is also coming soon, so stay tuned! We’ll be sure to announce it on Twitter and here on our blog when it’s live.
RESPONSIVE DESIGN SUPPORT
While the email app on Android 2.3 and Android 4.0 support media queries, Android webmail clients do not. Check out the same email in the native app on Android 4.0 and Outlook.com in the Android browser:
If you suspect that your subscribers may be using Android webmail clients (or the Gmail Android application), it’s important to optimize the top corner and left side of the email for these subscribers. This optimization strategy would also be beneficial for those viewing on other mobile devices that don’t support media queries and don’t zoom/scale to fit.
| Android Media Query Support |
| Android 2.1 native client |
No |
| Android 2.2 native client |
Yes |
| Android 2.3 native client |
Yes |
| Android 4.x native client |
Yes |
| Android Outlook Exchange via native client |
No |
| Android Outlook.com app |
Yes |
| Android Gmail app |
No |
| Android Yahoo Mail app |
No |
| Gmail (Android Browser) |
No |
| Outlook.com (Android Browser) |
No |
| Yahoo! Mail (Android Browser) |
No |
Style Campaign also offers a comprehensive list of responsive design support across various email clients and mobile apps.
GET SCREENSHOTS OF YOUR EMAIL IN ANDROID WEBMAILS
Gmail (Android Browser), Outlook.com (Android Browser), and Yahoo! Mail (Android Browser) are available immediately for testing on all Litmus accounts. Just tick the boxes for the clients you want to see when starting your next test:
Don’t have a Litmus account? Sign up for a free 7-day trial and give it a try!
With such a wide array of email clients available, identifying the email programs and devices subscribers use to open emails important. Recognizing the value of identifying these trends, Silverpop recently announced the launch of their Email Insights application. Email Insights is powered by Litmus’ email preview and analytics functionality (and we couldn’t be happier about it!).
With Email Insights, users will be able to:
- Quickly preview their emails over 30 different email clients including Gmail, Outlook and iPhone and Android platforms
- Develop reports and easily analyze which devices and email clients recipients are opening email
Also, via a sync with Engage, marketers can determine the preferred device of each unique email recipient and send targeted content based on this preference.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Silverpop director of emerging apps Adam Steinberg explained how a marketer might leverage such a feature. “Instead of sending the same iPhone app launch message to everyone on their mailing list, they could create a special message for people who usually read those emails on an iPhone, with a direct link to download the app.”
Email Insights allows marketers to develop reports and see which devices and email clients are being used to open their email messages
Email Insights is a powerful way to seamlessly experience Litmus’ features alongside the Engage platform. Existing Litmus users interested in Email Insights will need to contact their Silverpop relationship manager about purchasing a separate Email Insights license.
HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?
Contact Silverpop toll-free at 1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767) or via email at info@silverpop.com.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
After wading through hours of footage, the videos from our mobile email design master class are finally ready!
Here’s a summary of what you’ll find:
Designing for (Almost) Every Device
Ros Hodgekiss discusses what’s pushing the demand for mobile-friendly newsletters and shares her comprehensive 4-step planning process to design emails for (almost) every device.
Five Tips for Better Mobile Emails
Five tips in under five minutes! If you’re strapped for time, Elliot Ross shares some “quick wins” for making your email experience great for mobile users without the need for media queries and responsive design.
Easy Ways to Implement Mobile Email
In this live coding session, Elliot covers how to easily create responsive emails with with just three CSS classes.
Big Picture Email Development
An expert in the noble art of “good enough,” Fabio Carneiro shares insights learned after creating robust, flexible and forgiving mobile friendly templates for over 2.5 million users.
Pushing the Limits of Email
Jonathan Kim will encourage you to break free from practicing defensive email design and start innovating with with CSS3, SVG animation, email heatmaps and other #nsfo (not safe for Outlook) techniques.
Email at Twitter
A fascinating look at how Twitter builds their amazing responsive emails, including Mircea Pașoi‘s tips for Internationalization, secrets to data-driven A/B testing and plenty of innovative messaging techniques you’ve never heard before.
Between taping the workshop and one-on-one time with each speaker, there is some fabulous content in these recordings. You’ll learn about responsive techniques and mobile email design straight from world-recognized experts.
WHERE TO FIND THE VIDEOS
Videos are available to anyone with an active Litmus subscription—you can find them at the top of the Extras tab inside your account.
Don’t have a Litmus subscription? Sign up today for over three hours of exclusive footage.
ADDITIONAL MOBILE RESOURCES
While market share stats have mostly held steady over the past few months, there were some exciting changes in April.
Not surprisingly, iPhone, Outlook, and iPad continue to top the charts; however, we’ve seen some major changes in the bottom half of the top ten:
- Yahoo! Mail moved from #7 to #6
- Yahoo! Mail Classic fell off the bottom of the list
- Windows Mail is now in the #10 spot
The biggest change was the sudden appearance of Outlook.com in the top ten. In July last year, Microsoft announced that Outlook.com would eventually replace Hotmail. While Hotmail users were encouraged to try Outlook.com, we didn’t see a lot of change until last month, when we noticed the two providers swapping out share.
RENDERING QUIRKS IN OUTLOOK.COM
With Outlook.com now firmly placed in the top ten, it’s important to watch out for some rendering quirks with this client:
- No support for CSS background images
- No support for CSS floats
- No support for the margin property
- Image blocking
- No support for ALT text
- Irritating defaults for standard header tags
The good news is that Outlook.com email testing is included on all Litmus subscriptions.
THE LATEST ON MOBILE GROWTH
There has been little change in desktop, webmail and mobile opens:
A small increase in desktop opens was accompanied by decreases in mobile and webmail opens. Desktop opens now represent 34% of total opens, while mobile remains head of the line at 42%. For the first time, webmail opens dropped below 25%.
The trends clearly show desktop and mobile email clients favored over webmail clients. While consumers may continue to use free webmail services such as Gmail and Yahoo!, there’s an indication that they may utilizing IMAP services for these accounts to read email on smartphones and desktop email clients like Outlook or Apple Mail.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Have you ever received a great email and wondered, “how did they do that?” Or wanted to share an awesome email you created, but was worried it would break when forwarded? Without easy access to the source code or a web-based version, these can be tricky tasks — and an issue we frequently encounter when analyzing emails for our inspiration posts.
Knowing we weren’t the only email geeks facing this issue, we created Scope:
DESKTOP, MOBILE, HTML AND TEXT VIEWS
Scope creates a clean, shareable version of any email — complete with desktop and mobile previews — in a single click. Easily show off your new responsive design techniques, or just double check that your text version is formatted correctly.
CHECK OUT THE CODE
Scope’s sleek code inspector decodes and cleans up HTML, making it crystal clear to view.
FREE TO USE FOR EVERYONE
Scope is free! No signup or subscription required. Just add the bookmarklet to your browser, and start scoping! Currently, Scope works with Gmail, and desktop apps for Mac and PC are also coming soon.
FREE LITMUS SERVICE FOR A YEAR
We’re giving away an annual subscription to our Plus plan in what may be the easiest contest ever. To win, Scope an email and share the link on Twitter, make sure to the include the hashtag #emailinspiration in the tweet:
The winner will be chosen at random and will receive an annual Plus subscription to Litmus worth $990! The contest will run for a week: from Tuesday, April 30th through Tuesday, May 7th, with the winner being announced on Wednesday, May 8th. You’ll also want to be sure you’re following us so we can send you a direct message when you win.
HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?
Do you have any questions about Litmus Scope? Check out our help article, or feel free to email us at hello@litmus.com.
