Mobile Email Campaign Fail (BlackBerry) – Whistler-Blackcomb

Like most of you, I constantly receive promotions over email, which I check on my BlackBerry on my way to work.

I’m always victim of frustrating usability issues thanks to having a BlackBerry (Pearl Flip) phone. At least in North America, everything seems to be targeted to iPhones and Androids.  Granted, creating an email campaign that’s perfect for everyone is, most of the times, not a viable option. But email marketers should at least have the basics fail-safe.

A few days ago I got an email promotion from Whistler Blackcomb – a perfect example of not having those fail-safe.

Let’s see why the email was no good

The email title was good, I clicked on it. But when I opened it, I didn’t get any usable piece of information to convert – I’ve attached the email below.

But don’t feel bad, @whistlerblckcmb, you are among the majority who seem not to consider BlackBerry users in your email campaigns.

I’m not going to go into details on how to go about addressing BB users but, I suggest you try:

• Including the offer or promotions as text – not images only.
• If you really want to use images, adding a more descriptive ALT for your images. You have four images, all with the same alt=”Whistler Blackcomb 72 Hour Sale”
• Making some of the links clickable for BB users, particularly the one for viewing the email on the web.

The problem in this case was not that I couldn’t click on the information – I think most BB users are used to that. Rather, it was that I didn’t have any idea what the promo was.

Here’s the email as I saw it on my phone:

(Props to www.screenmuncher.com for being a cool screen capture app for BlackBerry,. It worked with my Gmail App.)

Any of you out there with the same problem?