Mobile is the most popular environment for a subscriber’s first interaction with an email. At the same time, subscribers consume email differently on mobile devices. These two facts necessitate a mobile strategy that accounts for how and where users interact with your emails. In this post, we’ll break this behavior down by the general data available to us today and then look at the email marketing strategies that can help engage and optimize email marketing for mobile users.
48% of email opens happen on mobile devices.1
Mobile users by and large use their mobile devices to check their email. More emails are opened on mobile devices than in desktop or webmail clients. Plus, nearly 91% of mobile users report using their smartphone to check email—most before they’ve even had breakfast.2 As a result, these users need to be able to view your emails on their mobile device.
What does this mean for you? You need to make responsive design a priority. If you’re not optimizing for mobile, you’re losing nearly half of your subscribers. You need responsive design in order to give your email subscribers the best possible user experience.
And there’s also the fact that the first link in a responsive design email on mobile has a 30% higher click rate than non-responsive design.3 If that isn’t enough to get you motivated to switch to responsive design, we don’t know what will.
87% of clicks will happen when a reader opens an email for the first time, but only 78% of clicks on mobile devices happen on the first open.4
Okay, what does this mean? Though most opens are on mobile devices, it’s becoming more difficult to turn those opens into clicks. Instead, subscribers open your email for the first time on their mobile device and then come back to it for a second look on their mobile device or on a desktop.
If you want your subscribers to come back for that second look, you need to create the Best. Content. Ever. That is—compelling, relevant and shareable content that will hold your subscriber’s interest enough to get them to return and engage with your email, preferably on their desktop since, as we’ll see in our next point, that’s where most of the clicks and conversions happen.
A related note: Before you jump into content creation, you’ll want to look at your email analytics to find out where your subscribers are opening your emails and then optimize your content—subject lines, preheaders, etc.—for those devices.
Mobile readers who open emails a second time from their computer are 65% more likely to click through.5
Email consumption behavior like this points to the necessity for a seamless user experience across channels. Once you create that relevant content that inspires your subscribers to take a second look, you need to ensure your content is also optimized for desktop in order to get those conversions.
Mobile users migrate from one channel to another, and they expect your mobile-friendly email to link to a mobile-friendly website. (Check out Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to find out if your page is mobile friendly or not.)
Mobile users care most about having easy access to content across all of their devices. Companies delivering on that content demand will win more conversions.
A note on data:
As always, we suggest that you look at the data for your own subscribers. Take a look at your email analytics to see where your emails are opened and where you’re getting clicks. Use your customer’s tracking mobile behavior to create a better mobile strategy for your business and a better email experience for your mobile users.
What are some of the ways that you’ve seen mobile use impact email marketing? Share your observations in the comments section below.
Interested in making mobile-friendly emails part of your mobile content strategy? Get a little help from your friends at Filament.
1. Litmus. “2015 State of Email Report.” 2015.
2. ibid.
3. Litmus and MailChimp. “The Science of Email Clicks: The Impact of Responsive Design & Inbox Testing.” December 2014.
4. Campaign Monitor. “Email trends report: mobile vs. desktop.” May 2014.
5. ibid.
