Four tips for designing handheld-friendly emails that deliver their message on any screen or device.

So you've pretty much got this email newsletter thing down. Design looks great. Copy is crisp. Flow is, well, flowing. Inboxes everywhere are going to love what you're about to send their way. And your finger is hovering over the send button until someone -- probably that pimply intern Nick you never liked in the first place -- chimes in with, "So, how's this gonna look on my BlackBerry?"

And there it is, the question most senders hope doesn't get asked. But the mobile device crowd, while still a fairly small slice of the overall email viewing audience, is growing. Use of BlackBerrys and similar devices continues to rise, and research by the NPD Group shows that as of last September, 6 percent of people viewed their email on mobile phones, up from 3 percent just six months earlier.

So while there's no need to rework your entire email strategy around mobiles, it is time to make sure you include them in your design and testing mix. And a few small adjustments will probably do the trick. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Include handhelds in your email testing
It sounds rather obvious, but if you're wondering how your emails are going to render on mobile devices, send to them and find out. Have someone on staff view every email on a handheld before send-off, and if no one on staff has a BlackBerry or smartphone, consider making the small investment to get one. The insight you'll get into how a growing segment of your audience views your messages will more than pay for it.

Show the plain text version some love
Since most mobile devices will display the plain text version of your email, you'll want to spend some time with HTML's less sexy sibling before you consider the campaign officially ready for send-off. What works in HTML doesn't necessarily translate into text, where the old-school formatting of capital letters, dashes, equal signs and stars must stand in for HTML's fonts, colors, tables and images. Still, you may be surprised at the difference a little formatting clean up can make.

Are your readers using handhelds? Find out
If you're not sure just how many of your audience members are using mobile devices, there's a fairly easy way to find out: ask them. Take a second to add the question to your email signup screen, or take a few seconds more and construct a quick poll for your next newsletter. If enough of your readers are on handhelds, you might just start offering an "On the Go" version of your newsletter; a quick summary designed specifically for handheld users and their tiny screens.

Get to the point, will ya?
Remember that you're not just designing for different email clients; you're also designing for short attention spans. We all have them, and when it comes to the inbox -- or the BlackBerry or smartphone -- we want you to tell us why we should stop and read your email rather than deleting and moving on. With mobile devices, that rule is even more indispensable. Your subject line should reel them in, and your first few sentences should hit 'em on the head with a mallet. It's a figurative mallet, so no one actually gets hurt.

Clint Smith is the co-founder of Emma, a web-based email marketing and communications service. Read full bio.