Where are you reading this right now?

Location, location, location! That’s the saying in real estate – but it also applies to email marketing.

Where are your customers when they read your emails? Are they sitting at their desk on a computer? Are they sipping coffee in the local coffee shop and browsing on their iPad? On the train commuting to work, getting a head start on emails on their phone?

While you may not know exactly where your customers are when they view your emails, you can (and should) know how they are accessing your content. With the rise of smartphone use, more emails are being read on mobile devices than desktop or webmail:  In December 2016, mobile market share was at 54%, while desktop dropped to 16% and webmail was at 30%.1

If you’re not thinking about mobile optimization and responsive design, here are two more industry statistics that should make you start:

51% of consumers have unsubscribed from a brand’s promotional emails because their emails or website didn’t display or work well on their smartphone

43% of consumers have marked promotional emails from a brand as spam because the emails didn’t display or work well on their smartphone1

When we look across the Web of Science Author Connect database, we also see a similar trend of high mobile use – 54% of all email opens occur on mobile. And even more telling is that 39% of all opens are “multichannel opens,” which means the same email was opened on a mobile device and on desktop. Furthermore, we see the Apple iPhone running neck and neck with the Firefox browser on Windows computers as the top devices used for the last email open – meaning the recipient may have viewed the email on multiple devices (such as a cell phone and in webmail), but it’s the last device that gets counted.

where are you reading this - pie - percent of all opens

Now – what does this mean for you? With such a large variety in the types of devices and browsers being used to access email, your content needs to look good on all of them, otherwise you risk the relationship with your audience.  The best way to make sure your content renders correctly is utilizing a responsive design email template and testing them on lots of devices. We are witnessing this trend as more and more clients request help from our team for their email creative in order to get more engagement with audiences in their campaigns.

Are you feeling limited by your own resources to develop a mobile-friendly email? You don’t have to do it alone! Reach out to the Web of Science Author Connect team today to get started.

 

  1. 2017 State of Email Report. Litmus. Available at: https://litmus.com/lp/state-of-email-2017?utm_campaign=2017report&utm_source=emrblog&utm_medium=blog