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iPad and the future of email design

February 04, 2010

OK, I'll admit it. I got up early Thursday morning Sydney time to watch Steve Jobs keynote on the mysterious new tablet concept from Apple. While I'm quietly excited about the change this device will bring, there was really only one part of the show that I got out of bed early for. How was thing going to handle email? It lasted about 90 seconds in total, but that was enough.

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Since then I've had a few ideas stewing in my head that I wanted to share with you guys. What sort of impact this will have on how you approach email design, does this open any new doors or techniques to try? This morning I started throwing some of these together, and then stumbled across this great post from Paul Farnell of Litmus fame that generally summed up what I had to say. Go check it out and then read on for a few additional points I wanted to expand on.

HTML5 video an even stronger option

Back in October we discovered support for HTML5 video across all Apple products (Apple Mail, Entourage, MobileMe and the iPhone/iPod Touch). This meant you could include video in your email that would work reliably across every one of these email clients, with the benefit of falling back to alternate content for every other email client. This could be an image, a link, anything you like.

There is no reason to assume Apple will not use Webkit to render HTML emails on the iPad (just like all the email clients mentioned above). This means we can look forward to even wider support for the HTML5 video technique in the future. In further support of this, MPEG LA announced yesterday that its h.264 patent (which the HTML5 video technique uses) will remain fee-less for free internet video through to 2016.

Fewer distractions

Compared to every other web and desktop email client on the market, the iPad email client is noticeably free of the distraction. There isn't a crowded chrome loaded with options, a sidebar of mailboxes and folders or a column of advertising. It's the cleanest email experience out there for a large screen device. This, combined with Paul's observations about the typical environment the iPad is built for should combine to give you a more engaged subscriber.

A good thing for standards support

We were all surprised when the iPhone grew to more than 5% of the email client market within a year or so of its release. If the iPad experiences a similar sort of growth, it's a great thing for standards based email design (even with Outlook 2010 looming). As always, this is going to come down to your subscriber base.

Provided the iPad sends a unique user-agent to us when they render images, we can tell you guys exactly how many of your subscribers are using the device in your email client reports. Look out for the news from us the moment we can get our hands on one.

Don't lose sight of the lowest common denominator

While the gorgeous, full-screen display and giant preview pane might tempt us to push our designs a little further, it's important to remember that most of our subscribers are still using older email clients, likely at lower resolutions.

To me this is the most exciting thing to happen on the email client front for a long time. Do you guys feel the same or have a different perspective to share?

Posted in: Observations & Answers

18 Comments

rajamohan
February 4, 2010 3:30pm

really great design….u r blog is so nice
Marc Tiedemann
February 4, 2010 5:13pm

Here is a screenshot af a german Site covering Apple topics. They have more or less regular polls and the last one was about which Email Client Mac Users use the most. Thought this might be kinda interesting in conclusion with this post:
http://img.skitch.com/20100204-cgpnnrjh1dd8m7pua8cf88r62w.jpg
Chris Guillou
February 4, 2010 7:29pm

Good take, hadn’t thought of all the implications yet.

Cheers

Chris
Ara Garabedian
February 4, 2010 10:51pm

The iPad is a godsend for email marketing. But as the article stated, don’t get too excited just yet. HTML5 is still a LONG way off. There is still hope that current email client standards will improve and we’ll be able to develop richer and more interactive emails with existing html/css techniques.
Paul Farnell
February 4, 2010 11:10pm

Great stuff Dave. I’ve updated my article to link to yours. I hadn’t considered there being fewer distractions - that makes it even better!

By the way, Gruber found the iPad user agent, so it can definitely be identified for stats.
blogjunkie
February 5, 2010 1:09am

I’m excited about the possibilities too but Outlook 2010 brings me crashing back down to reality. Looking forward to some tutorials from you guys on how to best balance HTML5 and Outlook :(
indie_preneur
February 5, 2010 2:01am

The iPad is going to be a bringer of change for email, but until it has a large chunk of market share, all the goodies have to take a ‘progessive enhancement’ approach to them. Until Outlook dies down (not going to happen), or becomes more compliant (hopefully, ‘07 + ‘10), then most of us have to deal with their limitations first.

However, it is going to be very cool to design for—especially the video, great post.
DraakUSA
February 5, 2010 4:44am

I had to laugh at the that it supports video. Apple still does not support flash, and a lot of videos are in Adobe Flash format. Even using the HTML5 coding, the swf format will not be supported. It’s one the things my spouse doesn’t like, she can’t watch her shows on Hulu.
Mathew Patterson
February 5, 2010 5:17am

@Draak If you are putting videos in your own email you can choose whatever format of video you like, so you just would not use a Flash player.
Mark Grant
February 6, 2010 6:29am

The attention you are giving to this worries me about the business focus campaign monitor has, and how rooted in reality you are. This article comes across like a gushing scoolboy fan rave, not a responsible article from a business that serves email to everybody.

You do realise that while the iphone is most used mobile device, it still accounts for less than 1% of web use? And that macs worldwide maybe account for 5%?

A non essential device like the ipad is unlikely to get anywhere near iphone propagation, so until such time as its ownership becomes more than a microscopic blip in stats, your gushing contention that we all have to design for the ipad is frankly ridiculous to the point of unprofessionalism.
Johnny Speiermann
February 6, 2010 7:23am

Nice post. I actually had a few considerations myself regarding web page design. How should call to actions be designed for touch screens? Will it be the death of square buttons in exchange for round buttons or buttons shaped like real buttons? A good example is iPhone games from Donot Games where they use round buttons which in my opinion seems more intuitive. Unfortunately they use buttons with the same color instead of a green button for Start. Just from watching my daughter (6 years) using my iPhone for games I learn a lot about good design. She is only just starting to learn the letters, but can use quite a few of the games on her own. That must mean that those games are using the right design.
Mathew Patterson
February 6, 2010 10:20am

@Mark

your gushing contention that we all have to design for the ipad is frankly ridiculous to the point of unprofessionalism

I think you might be misreading this post a bit. Clearly it is a post about how the iPad is going to handle email, and that is what it discusses.

The whole article ends with “Don’t lose sight of the lowest common denominator”. You would be foolish to not pay attention to the iPad though. The iPhone has clearly changed the way smartphones are expected to work, and it is possible the iPad will do the same for mobile computing email.

You say “This article comes across like a gushing scoolboy fan rave, not a responsible article from a business that serves email to everybody”. Campaign Monitor is made up of actual people with their own opinions, you’ll find plenty of posts on this site that talk about how we feel on topics related to email.

If professionalism to you means not being able to be excited about something, then perhaps we are not professional in that sense. It doesn’t make Campaign Monitor suddenly not deliver the exact same emails you were already able to send to your clients, so there really is no need to worry.
thagoodshepherd
February 8, 2010 2:55pm

@Mathew Patterson and that is the reason i love campaign monitor… real people with real feelings helping real people with real feelings.
David
February 9, 2010 5:42am

Email design is a huge part of my job now and I am very excited about the possibilities the iPad brings. The future of email standards and practices continues to grow despite all the setbacks that Outlook has brought with it.
Steve Woods
February 19, 2010 7:52pm

I hope it falls flat on it’s backside then in that case. I certainly don’t want images or video (wtf!) in my e-mails especially if they’re displayed by default, on the basis that 99.9% of mail I receive is either marketing or other forms of advertising.

Seriously - who is going to sit down with their iPad with a glass of wine and think “ohhh I should check my e-mail to see how rich the advertising e-mails I receive are” ?

I realise your business is producing beautiful e-mails, but you have to remember that it’s still just tarted-up e-mail and on that basis no matter how much you polish a turd, it still stinks.
Pix
February 22, 2010 9:47pm

I Just included the ipad in one of our new templates. You have to love the aesthetic of apples design.

check it : http://www.mailglootemplates.com/ishop-ecommerce-email-template/
Scott Spiro
February 28, 2010 6:23pm

There’s some great opportunities for developers with the coming of the iPad. An important niche will be development of new and improved e-mail apps (if Apple allows them). For business use this will be especially important. Business users of Exchange 2007 are anxious for an app that displays all unread mail from across many folders to be displayed in a single area.
Annia Braiser
March 26, 2010 12:38am

iPad has shocked many people with its great design and touch-screen compatibility. The main idea of Apple behind the creation of iPad is that Apple wants to produce something touch operated in the field of notebooks. Giving a new style to notebooks, Apple mixed it with iPod because many people love iPod. That is why Apple thought of making the notebook touch-enabled, user-friendly, and work-friendly. To facilitate more, iPad accessories were also created making it more easy to use. IPad lovers include people from business class, professional fields, students, and travelers. All these people love apple ipad because of it`s new features involving GPRS, Maps, and distraction free e-mail client.

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