Can You See Me Now?

I am the proud owner of a Blackberry (an older Blackberry) but nonetheless I am constantly connected to my email, social networks and even my family members who still prefer to talk over text.

When I open my mailbox and browse through the partial ‘From:’ addresses and bits of subject lines, if I recognize the sender from the first 8 letters of their company name, and they have managed to intrigue me with the first 8 or 9 letters of their subject line, voilà… I open the email within seconds of receiving it. I find out about huge clearance sales, the release of concert tickets and maybe even block space on my calendar for an appealing Webinar.

However, more often than not when I open my “Don’t Miss…” email I end up staring at a white box with a grey border that simply states “Blank”.

Now for the next few seconds I am left wondering what it is I might be missing. I could press a few keys and get the image, but is it worth the time downloading the file if, once it appears on screen, the image text is tiny and illegible anyway?

The urgency of the subject line that once captured my attention quickly fades and I move onto “Save up to…” or the “One-Day S…” emails. By the time I am sitting back in front of my computer I have forgotten all about what it is I may have missed.

If you must use a large JPEG as your entire email message, the least you could do is add a few lines of text to the beginning of your message. Or better yet follow best practices that recommend using a balanced text to image ratio. Not only will it help you bypass spam filters it would appease those of us constantly connected through our Blackberries.

If email marketers thought about their mobile audience before hitting ‘Send’, all us Blackberry users would stop having nightmares filled with blank white boxes. Instead our dreams would be filled with the shoe sale we didn’t miss or the front row concert tickets we snagged before they sold out to those that read their email with computers.

With over 31% of mobile phone users checking email from their devices what is it going to take to get companies to optimize their message to reach their mobile audience?