Whether you're planning for it or not, people are reading your emails on their phones. Here are the steps you need to take to ensure your message translates.

Mobile is the technology with the highest audience penetration rate globally, and with smartphone ownership on the rise, mobile email marketing is going becoming increasingly important.

With that said, the term "mobile email campaign" is a misnomer. The first and foremost concept email marketers need to embrace is that there is really no such thing as a mobile email campaign in the strictest sense. Emails are sent to email addresses, and it is the recipients alone who decide whether to read those emails on their mobile phones or on their desktop computers. Consumers' preferences can and will change based on what they are doing and what technologies they have at their disposal at any given moment. In other words, people are reading emails on mobile devices, right now, even if the marketer doesn't know about it or plan for it.

In fact, it's very likely that a high percentage of email marketers have no idea whether their emails are being read on mobile devices and, as a result, are missing the unique opportunity to communicate with their customers through emails that are both content- and design-appropriate for today's on-the-go consumers. 

Marketers can safely assume that a significant portion of their emails is being read on mobile phones. So therefore optimizing emails for cross-platform performance is a large but necessary labor.

... Here are key optimization practices that will help you produce mobile-friendly emails for most devices.