Here at Mailify we talk a lot about the benefits of responsive design, and responsive emailing in particular. However, we recognize that sometimes the technical details and statistics don’t quite have the impact that real-life images and examples do.

Last week, our subscribers and beta-testers received an email from us simply updating them on our progress and providing some recent blog articles that they could take a look at to see what we’ve been up to.  Below are 3 real screenshots showing our email being opened on iPhones.  (side note: 25% of all emails are opened on iPhones)

The first image on the left is with our email in static – in other words, this is what the email would look like if it was sent with the responsive feature turned off.  In this scenario the email content is displayed 1 way, regardless of the device or screen size the viewer is using. The other two images are screenshots of the responsive email that was actually sent.

That’s a pretty clear difference.

While the static email technically «works», it is an ease-of-use nightmare.

The body text is tiny and unreadable, while the images are shrunk down and distorted. In addition, the calls-to-action and engagement elements of the email like the «read more» buttons and social media icons are so small that they break the most literal «rule of thumb». When designing for content that may be viewed on mobile touch screen devices, it is incredibly important to remember that people are not pointing and clicking with a mouse pointer. If a user is going to interact with your email on a mobile device, they need to easily be able to tap it with their finger!

The responsive version, on the other hand, has none of these problems. The text is noticeably larger and easier to read, while the rest of the elements fit the screen perfectly and are the ideal size for a person’s finger to interact with.

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