As people increasingly turn to mobile devices to read and manage their email, a new report shows mobile email opens will surpass PC-based opens by the end of 2013. As someone who checks her email before getting out of bed in the morning, this is no surprise to me—what about you?
The report was based on data from marketing agency Knotice, which based its findings on a sample of 500 million emails sent in 11 different industry verticals, including retail, consumer products, cable and telecomm, etc.
In examining stats compiled since 2010, the trend toward mobile email opens continues to increase. For instance, 41 percent of commercial emails were opened on mobile devices in the second half of 2012, up from 27 percent in 2011.
Based on these cumulative stats (pictured below), Knotice predicts that more than 50 percent of commercial emails will be opened on mobile devices at the end of the year.
The stats include smartphones and tablets, and the report also shows a breakdown of opens by device (below). Apple iPhones and iPads lead the pack, with Android devices trailing in second.
If email marketing is part of your digital strategy (and it should be), this is a clear and undeniable signal to examine your mobile email experience. Are your messages optimized for readers on smartphones and tablets? Do you know how many of your subscribers access the information on mobile devices? If you keep a close eye on this information, I expect you’ll see those numbers continue to increase throughout the year.
Just think about your own email habits. If they’re anything like mine, your phone is glued to your hand—and you read messages at all hours of the day and night. If I can’t easily access product details or other info included in the email on my mobile device, well, I’m much less likely to take action. And I’m going to guess that you’re not sending emails because you don’t have anything better to do, you’re probably doing it as part of your lead generation tactics and as part of your overall integrated marketing strategy. So, if you want your email to produce leads and offer valuable information and opportunities to your customers and prospects, making it easy for readers to take action only makes sense.
There’s an easy step to checking the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. Add yourself to your email list. Then when you receive an email, try testing it on your own mobile device. How does it look? Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and look at your email through their eyes. What changes can you make to create a more compelling, accessible experience? Make these adjustments now and you’ll be poised to capture the increasingly powerful mobile market.
What about you? Are you, like me, reading lots and lots of email on devices? What’s important to you when it comes to those emails?
Shelly Kramer is a Principal Analyst and Founding Partner at Futurum Research. A serial entrepreneur with a technology centric focus, she has worked alongside some of the world’s largest brands to embrace disruption and spur innovation, understand and address the realities of the connected customer, and help navigate the process of digital transformation. She brings 20 years’ experience as a brand strategist to her work at Futurum, and has deep experience helping global companies with marketing challenges, GTM strategies, messaging develoment, and driving strategy and digital transformation for B2B brands across multiple verticals. Shelly’s coverage areas include Collaboration/CX/SaaS, platforms, ESG, and Cybersecurity, as well as topics and trends related to the Future of Work, the transformation of the workplace and how people and technology are driving that transformation. A transplanted New Yorker, she has learned to love life in the Midwest, and has firsthand experience that some of the most innovative minds and most successful companies in the world also happen to live in “flyover country.”
