Understanding mobile email optimization

You will learn

Learn about the default mobile optimization settings Klaviyo offers for emails, as well as tools for customizing how your message appears across devices. You can also choose to disable all mobile optimizations by navigating to the Styles tab of your email template.

General mobile optimization options

If you choose to enable mobile optimizations, certain adjustments will be made automatically to optimize your email's appearance when viewed on a mobile device.

If you would prefer your email not be optimized for mobile devices, open your template's Styles tab. Under Mobile optimization, turn off Optimize for mobile.

With Optimize for mobile turned on, you can make other adjustments specifically for mobile viewing, including:

• Adjust content margins
• Adjust text and heading sizes on mobile
• Adjust text and heading spacing on mobile
• Adjust block padding on mobile

Header bar layout on mobile

Select a Header bar block, then scroll down to the Mobile layout menu within the Styles tab to select a mobile layout. The default is Stack all, and you can change this to suit your needs.

Hide on mobile or desktop

You can choose whether a block appears on mobile, desktop, or both. Select the block and open its Display tab, then choose an option under Show on.

If device visibility is set on the section, it overrides the settings for its blocks. Select the section and open its Display tab to change the section’s visibility or turn off Set same visibility for all blocks in this section to set visibility for each block separately.

Stretch image option

For an image block, you can choose to display the image at its maximum available size on mobile. Select the image block and open its Styles tab. Under Image layout, turn on Fill column on mobile. If Fill column is on, Fill column on mobile is already on. To turn off the mobile setting, first turn off Fill column.

To remove horizontal block padding on mobile, turn on Full width on mobile under Block padding in the image block’s Styles tab.

Columns stack on mobile

Stacking columns (created using the Columns layout or Split block options) on mobile devices allows for larger text and images that are easier to read on a small screen. If you’d prefer your columns to appear side-by-side on mobile, choose the setting for your layout:

• For a Columns layout, select the section and open its Styles tab. Under Mobile stacking, select No stacking.
• For a Split block, select the block and open its Styles tab. Under Mobile stacking, select No stacking.

The columns will remain side-by-side, but will be resized to fit on a mobile screen.

Text block padding on mobile

When mobile optimization is on, Override text area padding is enabled by default and sets the left and right text area padding to 18px. To use each text block’s own text area padding instead:

1. Open your template’s Styles menu.
2. Scroll to the Mobile text and headings section.
3. Turn off the Override text area padding toggle.
   

Email client support for mobile optimization

Many email apps have varying levels of support for mobile optimizations.

If you are concerned about how your email design will render across different email clients and devices, using a third-party email testing tool can help.

We recommend exploring the use of a tool like Litmus, which offers a free trial as well as monthly paid plans. You can also search for free alternatives that allow you to test and preview how your emails will look when viewed by recipients using different email clients and devices.

Determine how many subscribers are opening on mobile

In the Deliverability tab of a sent email campaign, scroll down to Performance by email client to see unique opens grouped by email client and split between mobile and desktop. This can give you an indication of how your audience is interacting with your emails. Opens from unknown email clients are excluded, so the chart does not show a complete breakdown of your audience’s devices.

You can also segment based on this information by adding a filter to the condition What someone has done (or not done) > Opened Email. For example, to find mobile openers, add a filter where Client Type equals Mobile Browser.

Additional resources