Email marketing in the mobile age
Email marketing strategy is more important than ever in an ever-growing digital age, yet many businesses are unprepared or have half-baked strategies. With hundreds of billions of emails being sent every single day, the vast majority from the business sector, email marketing is absolutely crucial to any business’ marketing strategy. But what has become apparent in recent years is the growing shift from desktop to mobile. With a wide range of tablets and phones now available, businesses as well as personal consumers are opening more and more of their emails on mobile devices; Campaign Monitor looked at data from 1.8 billion emails and found that 41% were opened on mobile devices.
So why would you need to adapt your strategy for mobile viewing and interaction? Put simply, mobile has changed the way people consume emails. While the number of opens has dramatically increased on mobile devices, this has led to a decrease in click-through rates. This can be put down to poorly-optimised content and landing pages that aren’t responsive, making it difficult or time consuming for the consumer to follow links.
What is also crucial is striking, engaging content, as more and more clicks are coming from second or even third opens of emails. People tend to prefer viewing content more in-depth or making transactions on a larger device, like a tablet. Customers tend to gravitate to mobile devices for different tasks; while the iPhone is the most commonly used mobile device for opens and clicks, the iPad is the preferred device for transactions, which can be seen in the graph below. Mobile browsing isn’t just a fad, either. McKinsey estimates that 2 to 3 billion people will come online worldwide through mobile internet over the next decade, with an annual economic impact of between $3.7 trillion and $10.8 trillion globally by 2025.
Designing campaigns for mobile no longer means you need to restrict your content to plain text. As mobile consumption has risen, technology has improved, meaning load times can be really fast now. With 4G in most large towns and cities in the UK and US, and super-HD displays, visual and interactive content like videos can revolutionise your email marketing campaigns. Dynamic, interactive content will yield a higher click-through rate, and creates a buzz around your business.
Remember, it’s not too late. Despite increased usage and trends, as few as 19% of businesses have an integrated mobile strategy. Adopting a mobile-first mindset when it comes to your email marketing will still give you an edge in 2015, even if you’ve never tried it.
