Smartphones and tablets are everywhere you look; it seems like everyone is online checking email, social media, or gaming. Portable devices make up a large part of email interactions and it is essential for marketers to consider how prevalent mobile e-mail interactions are. In fact, mobile email is so pervasive that, depending on the audience, product, or genre, it accounts for 15-70% of all email opens.
Statistics behind Mobile E-mail Usage
Certain age groups are more likely to open emails on their mobile device before a computer (if they use a computer at all). According to Adestra’s “Consumer Adoption & Usage Study”, of people between the ages of 14-18, 40% will always read emails on mobile devices first, ages 19-34 are at 29%, and ages 57-67 are at 8%. 55% of the older age range (56-67) claims to never read an email on their mobile device first, as compared to 18% in the 19-34 demographic. 55% of email is now opened on a mobile device, making mobile email more popular than desktop email clients. This is a number that has been growing – in Q1 2011, 15% of total email opens occurred on a mobile device, which grew to 65% by Q4.
B2C emails get 57.4% more opens on mobile than B2B email, ranking 42.78% opens on mobile for B2C compared to 27.18% for B2B (DDMA “Nationale Email Benchmark 2015” (2015))
Responsive design results in a nearly 3.3% unique clicks from mobile users, versus 2.7% for non-responsive. The first link an email also has a 30% higher rate of being clicked than in a non-responsive design.
People’s biggest complaints with mobile email were as follows:
- Receiving too many (44%),
- Not relevant (37%)
- Too small to read and interact with (32%)
- Website and landing pages not mobile optimized (26%)
- Not well formatted for mobile phones (21%)
Optimization and responsive design are essential; 71.6% of consumers will delete emails if they look bad on mobile.
Mobile Email by Industry
The total mobile email and click rates have wide variance across industries.
Aside from business products and services, the majority of emails were opened on mobile devices across all industries. At 42.96%, consumer services have the highest average of total opens; ranking at the bottom is Health Care at 20.65% and Associations at 24.95%. On mobile phones, email marketing generated 26.7% of sales compared to 23.1% on tablet and 20.9% on desktop. According to Yesmail “Email Marketing Compass: the Season of Mobile” (2015), revenue per mobile email click was 40 cents – more than double that of a desktop click.
Marketers who account for the mobile device preference in screening emails will benefit greatly; easy-to-view design and mobile-friendly layouts are more likely to be opened, viewed, and clicked.
