Dive Brief:

• Google is making it easier for marketers to create responsive design email for Gmail via CSS media queries.
• Pierce Vollucci, Associate Product Manager, Gmail and Steve Bazyl, Developer Programs Engineer, Google Apps, wrote in a blog post, “When you send emails, your recipients might read them on a computer, tablet, or phone — or more likely, all three. However your message might look different on all these devices. Later this month, you’ll be able to use CSS media queries with Gmail and Inbox by Gmail to ensure that your message is formatted the way you intended, whether it's viewed on a computer, a phone in portrait mode, or a tablet in landscape mode. You’ll be able to change styles based on width, rotation, and resolution, allowing for more responsive formatting to optimize your email for every device.”
• For smartphone users, Gmail will feature larger text and more tappable buttons.

Dive Insight:

Marketers should already be thinking mobile first, but this move by Google makes it easier. People are engaging with and opening email on mobile devices, so it’s important to take a few design rules to heart when crafting email, such as single column, large tappable buttons and a single-minded call-to-action in the email copy. These are good rules to follow at any time, but are magnified for the mobile audience.

It's an easy tagline to declare “email is dead” but in reality email remains the glue of digital marketing. In fact recent research from Fluent found that promotional email is the most effective way of influencing millennials' purchasing decisions, with 48% of U.S. millennial internet users saying promotional emails impact their purchasing decisions at least "some of the time," according to eMarketer.

Google has been on a mission over the past several years to refine its offerings for an cross-channel digital landscape. On the email front, it introduced promotions and social tabs several years, a move that made some marketers unhappy, as it made their messages harder to find in a user's inbox. With the latest move to automated responsive design, Google is making it easier for marketers to deliver a strong user experience once their emails are opened.