Net-Results’ new email builder puts responsive design first

It is no surprise that mobile phones are taking over the Internet.

According to recent research by Annalect on millennials and technology, the smartphone is the most used and preferred device for all aspects of the shopping process, except when it comes to the actual purchase. And it isn’t just millennials who care about using mobile first — we’re all at it.

To ensure that important marketing communications are able to be read on all devices — from smartphones to tablets, from laptops to smart TVs — Net-Results, the self-described “bootstrapped marketing automation company,” has announced today the launch of its new, fully responsive email builder.

I asked Michael Ward, founder and CEO at Net-Results, what led them to go down the road of building a fully responsive email creator.

“It’s become pretty common for us to see around 35 percent of our customers’ email opens occurring on mobile devices,” Ward said. “In fact, we’ve seen campaigns where two thirds of readers are on phones. This fact, combined with feedback from existing customers and our own lead nurturing processes, led us to optimize for the mobile experience as well as that of the traditional desktop.”

Of course, it isn’t just the sheer number of people using mobile that should drive vendors toward fully responsive emails and communications. Several case studies have shown that responsive design leads to higher revenues and conversions.

VentureBeat is studying marketing automation platforms…
Chime in, and we’ll share the data with you.

“The phone is the first thing people go to in an idle moment. Our data shows that mobile interaction with email continues to increase,” Ward said.

The new email builder tool looks slick and works well. As with most email builders, users can start with a template and then drag and drop elements to the page, such as text, images, sidebars, buttons and more. Net-Results calls this its “palette,” and in demonstrations it looks slick and intuitive.

It is when you preview the results, which can be shown in a mocked-up smartphone before sending to an audience, that you see how well the tool deals with various elements of the design. Sidebars and other elements move under the main body content if necessary. Images resize to fit, and fonts are adjusted to suit the real estate available to the reader.

While this is nothing new in web design, many email builders — within other current marketing automation products and email marketing tools — still haven’t made the leap to fully responsive design.

“We’ve rolled out the new email builder for all existing customers, and the early response has been extremely positive. Customers are very happy to have responsive design baked into the templates they start from and the emails they create,” Ward said.

So what is next for Net-Results? How do they intend to take this initiative further as customers’ needs become more sophisticated?

“This summer we’ll be teaching this tool to also be a mobile responsive landing page builder,” Ward said. “This email builder, when all is said and done, generates HTML. Currently the HTML it generates is for HTML emails. We’re going to add in the ability to generate modern HTML/CSS that uses Twitter’s popular, responsive ‘Bootstrap’ CSS framework for mobile and desktop-friendly drag-and-drop landing page design.”