Mobile open rates have grown 300% since 2010 (and show no sign of slowing). Now is the time to start seriously optimizing for mobile.

To get you started, we’ve collected seven essential tools to mobilize your email marketing.

1. JPEGMini

http://www.jpegmini.com/

We’ll start with a quick, easy win. Download speeds can be slower on mobile, so keeping your image file sizes low is vital.

We use JPEGmini to dramatically reduce the size of our images, before adding them to an email. In a few simple clicks you can cut up to 80% of the “weight” from an image, without sacrificing on quality. It may add an extra step to your process flow, but it’s a great habit to get into.

Alternatives: Smushit

2. Litmus – Email Testing

https://litmus.com/

Litmus Email Testing

If you’re like me, you probably have a small number of email templates that you reuse again and again. Using a tool like Litmus is great for a periodical “audit” on your templates. It will show you what your email looks like in all popular mail clients, both moible and desktop.

If you can afford it (both in time and budget), it can be worthwhile testing every big campaign. For most marketers, running one good test every few months, or when you change your template, should ensure all emails look great on mobile.

Alternatives: PreviewMyEmail.com

3. Responsive Email Templates

http://www.themeforest.com

Themeforest Email Templates

As the testing might reveal, many emails do not display well on mobile devices. Some templates are too wide, which makes the text tiny and requires pinching and zooming. This kind of user experience kills engagement and could be having a significant negative impact on your results.

Using responsive email templates – like this set of 98 for only $18– is a great way to solve this problem. These templates automatically adjust to the viewer’s screen size, so your emails look great on any device.

4. Mailchimp or CampaignMonitor

http://www.mailchimp.com | http://www.campaignmonitor.com

Mailchimp's Mobile Editor

The responsive templates above can be customised and uploaded to your mail sender of choice, but if that’s not an option for you then check out the responsive email designers that Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor offer.

Mailchimp have a great video showing how to create a responsive email and Campaign Monitor have a blog post with a similar guide.

5. SparkPage – Mobile Landing Pages

http://www.sparkpage.com

Create mobile landing pages

The first four tools will make your campaigns look great on mobile, but what happens when a mobile user clicks on a link in your email? Where do you bring them?

If your mobile site has no landing pages (or especially if you have no mobile site at all), SparkPage will let you create individual mobile landing pages. Each page can be built in minutes, so it’s easy to build one for each email campaign you run. Use the page to detail a special offer, provide more information and display a strong CTA.

As the majority of your email opens will soon be mobile, you can also use SparkPage’s automatic redirect to bring the non-mobile users to your full site.

6. Google Analytics for Mobile

http://www.google.com/analytics

Google Analytics

The next step is to track mobile users when they visit your site or landing page, so that you can find bottlenecks, spot pitfalls and make improvements to increase conversions.

As most people reading this already know about (or are using) this particular tool, we’ll link you instead to a how-to article: “How to track mobile visitors with Google Analytics” and a short video walkthrough.

Alternatives: KISSmetrics | MixPanel.

7. Mobile CTA Tracking

Yozio

Now that your campaigns are ready for mobile, you might want to track some mobile specific campaign goals. Here’s two tools to do just that:

App Downloads: If you have a new app and want to promote it to your users, what better way than an email to their smartphone? Yoz.io’s campaign tracking lets you generate a unique URL for your email campaign and then track the mobile installs it generates.

Click-to-Call: You might worry that your checkout process isn’t mobile optimized – so why not get users to call your sales team? Use a tool like LogMyCalls to track how many calls your email marketing generates.

(Pro-tip: SparkPage can integrate LogMyCalls and Google Analytics for complete tracking!)  

These eight tools (we added one extra as a bonus 🙂 ) will let you easily mobilize your email marketing. If you send emails built for mobile, link to mobile landing pages and track with the right tools, you’ll soon see your campaign metrics improve.