If your email marketing messages don’t format correctly on mobile devices, 70% of people who receive them will delete them and 30% will unsubscribe. Those statistics come from the 2013 Consumer Views of Email Marketing report from BlueHornet Networks, Inc., and it represents a huge opportunity cost that brand marketers can’t afford to risk.
According to the research, two out of three email users in the United States sort through email messages on their mobile devices before reading them on their computers. In fact, nearly one out of two respondents to the BlueHornet Networks survey claimed to read emails most often on their mobile devices.
Most consumers sign up for brand email marketing because they want to get discounts (84%). The study found that 63% of consumers will buy from an email they read on their mobile devices, and over 74% of consumers will redeem discounts they received by showing their mobile device to a cashier at a brick-and-mortar store or location. In other words, sending discounts via mobile email marketing is more important than ever to a brand’s marketing plan. The last thing you want to do is lose views and sales because your brand’s email message didn’t display correctly on a consumer’s mobile device.
Demonstrating the growing acceptance of mobile email marketing, more of the respondents to the 2013 survey reported that they would consider opting down rather than unsubscribing than the 2012 survey (up 7%). In other words, be sure to offer the people on your brand’s email marketing list the choice to fully unsubscribe or simply opt down by selecting specific types of email messages they do and do not want to receive from your brand.
In 2013, consumers are mobile. They’re more likely to open emails on mobile devices than any other platform, and they’re likely to make a purchase (even making purchases with their mobile devices) based on the content of email marketing messages they read on their mobile devices. Poorly formatted email marketing messages affect consumers’ perceptions of the brand negatively and lead to deleted messages and lost sales. However, the majority of companies (58% according to the 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report from MarketingSherpa) are still not formatting their email marketing messages to display properly on mobile devices.
Bottom-line, if ensuring your brand’s email marketing messages are formatted for optimal mobile viewing isn’t already a top priority for your company, it should be. Every email you send that’s not optimized for mobile display equates to lost opportunities and reduced return on investment.
Image: Steven Goodwin
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
