How to Optimise Emails for the 60 Percent of People Who Read Them on Mobile

Mobile Email Optimisation Tips to Boost Engagement

If your email looks great on a laptop or desktop but breaks on mobile phones, you will disappoint most of your audience. In India, most people open emails on their phones. Studies show different numbers, but for most brands today, it’s 60%. So, if your audience is in India, the phone is the main screen for almost 60% of your audience.

If your email doesn’t open properly or it is hard to read on mobile phones, people don’t save it for later. They delete it. So, mobile email optimisation is no longer an extra step. It is the main step, and you can’t skip it.

If you are wondering how to do it the right way, then this blog is for you. Here you will learn best practices to do it right, simply.

Why Mobile Email Optimisation is Important

When you create an email for your Indian audience, think about mobile phones from the very first line because:

• The mobile is the primary device: Not everyone in India uses a laptop. Even in remote areas, people may not have a laptop, but they do have smartphones, and they manage all their email in the Gmail app.
• Mobile users delete emails instantly: People don’t keep messy emails that don’t open properly on mobile phones or require zooming or side-scrolling. They delete them right away, and you lose opens, clicks and the customer in 3 seconds.
• It improves user experience: Emails with readable text, sized images and buttons that are easy to tap provide a better experience. Subscribers do not have to zoom in or scroll sideways to read your message.
• Helps increase conversions: A well-designed email makes it easier for subscribers to take action, whether it is filling out a form, booking a demo/service or buying a product. A smoother experience can lead to more conversions.

Steps to Optimise Emails for Mobile Phones

We have seen the reasons why mobile email optimisation matters. Now, let’s look at how to do it right.

1. Start with Mobile-First Design

Most people design for desktop first. A wide, beautiful 800px email that looks great on the big screen. Then they squeeze it for mobile, which never works. You should flip it. Design first for mobile. If your design works for the 6-inch screen, it will automatically work on desktops.

What Mobile-First Really Means for Email Design

• Use only one column: Forget about one, two or three columns. On mobile, stack everything vertically because the side-by-side columns become too small to read. So, put everything one below the other: the header at top followed by the image, headline, text and button. Keep them all in one straight line. This is the most important rule for mobile-friendly emails.
• Left-align your text: Keep all your text left-aligned because centre-aligned text may look good on a laptop, but it is hard to read on mobile phones. Our eyes get tired trying to find where each new line starts. Left-aligned text is natural and easy to read.
• Keep your container at 600px max: Side-scrolling is the main reason people delete emails. Your email should be no wider than 600px and centred on laptops. On a phone, it will automatically become 100% wide to fit the screen.

2. Use Readable Font Sizes

One of the most common mistakes brands make is using small fonts in their emails without realising that if a person has to zoom in to see the content, they have already lost them. If you don’t want to lose your subscribers, fix your typography so people can actually read.

Here are the exact sizes you should use for your email:

• Email headline: This is what people first see when they scroll. So, it should be bold and 24px to 28px.
• Body copy: Keep it 16px to 18px, but never go below 16px for your main text. If your text is smaller than 16px, Apple auto-zooms it, which breaks your layout.
• Secondary text/footer: Keep it at a minimum of 14px.
• Line height: Packed lines are unreadable on mobile. So keep the line height to 1.5 or 1.6 to give your text room to breathe.

Other Important Typography Rules for Mobile-Friendly Emails

• Use system fonts, like Arial, Helvetica, Verdana and sans-serif because they load instantly. Custom web fonts may look good on laptops, but they load slowly in the Gmail App, which is the most commonly used email app in India.
• Keep your paragraphs to 2-3 lines maximum. Then a line break. A long wall of text may scare mobile readers.
• Use bullet points, as they are easy to scan. If you have three benefits, don’t write them in a paragraph. List them out in bullet points so readers can scan easily.
• Make the important words or sentences bold, but don’t overdo it.

3. Make CTA Buttons (Call-to-Action) Easy to Tap

On a laptop or computer, you click with a precise mouse pointer, but on a mobile phone you tap with your thumb. A thumb is much bigger and less precise. This is where most email fails.

You must make your CTA buttons thumb-friendly. Here are the rules to follow:

Size Matters

You must consider both Android and iOS when designing your CTA buttons. It should be at least 44px tall and 44px wide. Apple recommends this as the minimum tap target, and Google recommends 48px. For mobile phones, go for the full-width if you can. A full-width button is almost impossible to miss.

Make It a Button, Not a Text Link

Don’t just write “Click Here” under a blue underlined text because such lines are too small to tap. Create a solid button with a clear background colour, padding and bold text that’s easy to tap. Example: a button with a yellow background and bold black text that says “SHOP NOW”.

Space is Important

If you have two links or two buttons close together with not enough space, your subscribers are more likely to tap the wrong one. That’s why spacing is important. Leave at least a 10-12px gap between tappable elements.

One Email, One Goal

This is the golden rule of mobile email optimisation. For desktop you can have a primary CTA, secondary CTA, social icons and footer links. But on phones, that becomes chaos. People may get confused about what exactly to do and will either leave or delete your email. So, decide on the one thing you want your subscribers to do with their thumb. Make that the one big button. You can even repeat the same button twice in a long email, but don’t give 4 different actions.

4. Write Subject Line, Preheader and Copy for the Small Screen

Mobile email optimisation isn’t just about design, it’s also about content. Half the battle is won in the inbox itself, before the email is even opened. So, you must take care of the subject line, preheader and copy. Write for small screens, not desktop.

Subject line

On mobile, you get only 30-40 characters to display your subject line before it gets cut off. So, keep the subject line short and meaningful so customers can get the main message at a glance.

Preheader text

It is the line that you see next to or below the subject line in the inbox. Most brands waste this space by reusing lines from the email body. Don’t do that. Use this line to support your subject line and give one more reason to open. For email on mobile in India, this is the most valuable space.

Body copy

People don’t read emails on phones. They only scan, which means you only have a few seconds to let your email perform. Use the inverted pyramid, meaning start with the main benefit or offer, then give a little detail, and finally the CTA. Keep it conversational, like you are talking to one person. Simple words win on mobile.

5. Optimise Images and Speed for Mobile Data

Mobile users usually use mobile data, which is slower than a Wi-Fi connection. Large images and heavy email designs may take longer to load on mobiles, causing readers to lose interest and leave even before the email opens fully.

If your image takes too long, especially more than 5 seconds to load, people will close that email.

What should you do then?

• Compress images to reduce their file size, but make sure it does not affect their quality. Use image dimensions that fit mobile screens and avoid adding unnecessary images, GIFs and other elements.
• Keep the email design simple so the main message and CTA will be easy to access even on a slower connection.
• Add descriptive alt text to important images so readers can understand their purposes even if they do not load.
• Never send an image-only email because if the image does not load, your entire email is blank. Plus, it will go to spam.

6. Don’t Forget to Optimise Emails for Dark Mode

Most brands often miss this step, but it is important for email on mobile in India. Many users use dark mode on their phones to reduce brightness. In dark mode, email apps on Android and iOS change the background to a dark colour and the text to a light colour. If your email is not designed for this change, your text may become difficult to read, logos may disappear and images may look awkward.

Here’s how you can optimise emails for dark mode:

• Check text contrast to ensure the text and images remain readable and visible against both dark and light backgrounds.
• Add a contrasting background or border to your logo so it remains visible against a dark background.
• Test your email images, buttons and icons in both dark and light backgrounds.
• Test your email for different email apps because it may behave differently in Gmail apps, Apple Mail and Outlook. So, preview your email in the apps your subscribers use.

7. Test Like Customers, Not Designers

You can follow all the 6 steps above, but if you don’t test, your email will still fail. Just previewing your email on desktop or mobile won’t help. You will have to see it as your customers or subscribers see it.

You will have to do a three-phone test for your email:

• Gmail app on an Android phone
• Gmail app on an iPhone
• Apple Mail on iPhone

While testing for these, you should also test the emails in 3 conditions:

• With images turned off. Check if your email still makes sense.
• With dark mode turned on. See whether everything is visible or not.
• On a slow internet connection. See how long your email takes to load.

Apart from this, take the thumb test. See if you can easily tap the main button with one thumb while holding the phone in the same hand. If you can’t, make the button bigger. Before sending it to your subscribers, send it to your team members to see how it performs on real phones. This will help you catch about 90% of the problems.

Conclusion

Mobile email optimisation is no longer an option for your email marketing, but it is the main and most unavoidable part. Almost 60% of your Indian audience open their emails on phones.

Therefore, you should design the email for mobile phones first. Make it simple to read, easy to tap and fast to load. When you do that, you are not just doing mobile email optimisation, but you are showing respect for how people actually live today.

Your customers are busy. They are in a hurry to go, but you are giving them an email that works in that moment, with one thumb, on a small screen. Good mobile-friendly emails are not about fancy tricks. They are about clarity. Start your email with mobile, keep it simple and see your open rates and click rates finally start to grow.