A new study from eMarketer points to stats from Merkle indicating that 32% of U.S. mobile email users age 18 or older with an Internet-enabled phone check personal email via a mobile device between one and three times daily.

With an ever-growing segment of the U.S population checking email consistently on their mobile devices, consumer-focused email marketers need to take this into account and optimize their messaging and format accordingly.  Interestingly, the number of visitors to Web-based email sites declined 6% in November 2010, compared with the previous year, but users continue to access email on mobile devices at a rapid pace, according to comScore stats released in late January.  For instance, email access through mobile devices rose 36% during the same period.

While marketers are busy finding ways to leverage “new-age” mobile marketing techniques like LBS, mobile display, in-app advertising and more, they often overlook the benefits of something simple like tying together a mobile paid-search campaign with a mobile email campaign, for example.  Optimizing email campaigns for mobile screens isn’t as daunting as it may seem either.

Mobile optimized email campaigns require additions like links to a text version, dedicated mobile versions and scalable email designs.  Scale is important to ensure content looks good on any size screen.  Other tips to remember are designing messages on a grid system to align elements on the page and allow emails to scale up or down in proportion, as well as favoring one-column designs and grouping items into sections.

As an email marketer your audience is increasingly mobile, and taking a few extra steps to optimize your campaign for mobile devices ensures maximum compatibility and viewership, which translates to maximum results.