The vacation rental industry is growing online every day. More potential vacationers use the internet to research their next vacation than any other form. Since your customers are online it only makes sense for your vacation rental company to be online and have a strong presence.  Email marketing is a strong and relatively inexpensive way to reach your customers in the online dominated world. According to HubSpot, 45% of all email opens are now coming from mobile devices. This is a significant number in any industry, but is very telling for the vacation rental industry.  Tailoring your email campaigns to mobile devises can help your business gain more leads and acquire new vacationers. Use these tips to improve your mobile email campaign for vacation rental companies!

Be Visually-Friendly: According to BlueHornet, 80% of email subscribers will delete an email that does not look visually appealing on their mobile device. That is nearly your entire mailing list, explaining the need to be mobile friendly. Creating and maintaining a design template that is mobile friendly is key to mobile email success.

Fonts: Use larger fonts that are easy to see on a smaller smartphone screens. Clear, wide fonts improve readability and design. Smaller font causes subscribers to zoom in on their phone which can lead to the email being deleted before it is even read.

Be Concise: Content should be very efficient and to the point in a mobile email campaign. Copy length can cause subscribers to scroll down to read the entirety of the email. The major highlights and most important content of the email should be the top so the most subscribers read the information.  If your email is focusing on homes that have reduced prices, make sure these are at the top.  If the email is focusing on providing helpful content, make sure that information is at the forefront of the email.

Only Use One Column: When creating your mobile template, use only one column of text instead of two.  This improves the experience on smaller screens and improves readability. If you are featuring homes in your email, put the image of the home above the content, keeping the information in one column. Also remember that Android devices will only show the top left hand side of certain emails. Design your template so the main focus of the email is located there or the offer CTA.

Mobile-Friendly CTAs: If you are sending out a content offer to your subscribers, be sure that your call-to-action is touch-friendly or your potential vacationers will be unable to attain your content offer. The CTA should be the focus of the email to gain the highest traffic through mobile.  HubSpot recommends that the CTA should be a minimum size of 44px x 44px. Smaller CTAs will be difficult to read on mobile devices.  If there are issues with image rendering in the email, but sure that your CTA button is still visible.

Use ALT Text: Mobile email may block images in your email by default. As this is the case with many email systems, it becomes more important to optimize your email without images. This is done through ALT text. ALT text provides a very brief description of what the image that is not showing actually represents. If your email is offering an e-book about free activities on the beach, the ALT text could be free beach activities.

Combining these tips into your email marketing campaign for mobile users will improve open and click through rates immensely. Be sure to check your analytics to see how the emails are performing and if you have segmented the correct audience to receive the mobile-friendly version of the email. Vacationers will appreciate the easy experience and be able to find your content quickly.