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Are responsive emails outdated?
Looking for opinions / insights. I responded to a proposal on UpWork where the client needed four emails - four built for desktop and four built for mobile. I responded that in my experience responsive emails are the route to go. The proposer responded:
"we have spent 20 years doing email marketing and to us seperate mobile designs are a must in this day and age. We don't believe in responsive. Thats the lazy way out."
I responded that I would be open to understanding their process.
Is this true? Should we now be designing two separate emails for desktop and mobile? If so, do all ESPs have the capability to serve the correct version to the end user?
Depends a bit on how you're defining responsive.
Neither is outdated. Neither is "the lazy way out".
It's worth noting that no ESP can or will be able to serve the different versions to the end user depending on if they are using desktop or mobile. Tracking for mobile v's desktop isn't 100% accurate. and just because someone has previously opened on desktop doesn't mean they will never open on mobile.
Also viewport size is more important than the device. You can have a mobile device with a huge screen and a desktop device with a small preview pane both can be adjusted very easily to change the viewport size.
My only guess would be they are talking about having the layout change significantly on smaller viewports rather than just scaling down to fit. But worth clarifying with them to be sure.
I appreciate your feedback, it goes along with my beliefs. I was wondering if I had missed something in the email world. Unfortunately the proposer has not responded to my request for clarification.
Good luck with that. I disagree, you are correct. Responsive is the way to go. Seems unproductive to waste time creating 2 emails. I think you can do it. You would just design one for desktop and then design with some CSS for mobile.
I agree entirely with Mark Robbins. I don't know how they expect to deliver the correct version to each individual recipient.
I wonder if they're confusing terms. Perhaps they're thinking that responsive is mere scaling and don't understand that true responsive design changes (stacking, alternate images, etc.) are accomplished in the same HTML file.
I appreciate the responses and am glad I haven't missed something with tech moving so fast. Just when I had nailed down all the intricacies of responsive emails their request threw me off. The "lazy" comment offended me and I needed a reality check.
Some clients think you mean 'design for mobile' when you talk about responsive design. Perhaps sending them a screencast of the way a responsive emails adapts to the viewport will help them better understand, along with the info that Mark Robbins provided that emails cannot reliably be sent to an audience of desktop vs mobile viewers.
I'm an email developer for a major convenience store chain. Before I was brought on, the agency that they'd hired to do their emails was NOT doing responsive design at all. Which to me, was not the way to go, so I changed all of that when I was brought on and we've never looked back. Developing responsive emails is not "lazy". It's quite the contrary. You have to consider multiple email clients with multiple rendering engines and test, test, test. Not only is it best practice to have
responsive emails, but it's much more design/code efficient and probably more cost efficient in the long run. If the client is wanting 8 emails instead of just 4, it will cost them more in the long run. If these are going to serve as templates for future sends, they'll have to update ALL of them instead of just the 4. If the client is paying for 8, and that's what they want, then charge them for 8. Which begs the question, do they have a desktop website AND a mobile website?