It’s official; the most popular platform for interacting with marketing emails is now mobile devices. One problem that marketers still face however, according to recent reports, is that it’s becoming harder than ever to get users to click through on those emails once opened.
Using the data from over 6 million email marketing campaigns, researchers found that in 2013, over 40% were viewed on some type of mobile device while 28% were viewed on a desktop computer and another 22% on webmail.
Between 2011 and 2013 the shift toward mobile was shown to be extremely rapid, with an increase of 30% of all emails being opened on mobile devices.
The problem is that the percentage of emails actually being opened on mobile platforms is quite a bit lower than for others and, while it has stayed relatively steady on desktop and webmail, the percentage of clicks / opens on mobile devices was found to be steadily decreasing.
Savvy email marketers believe that this decrease in CTR might be due to the way that users interact with their mobile devices. In many cases an email is first opened on a mobile device including either a smartphone or tablet and, once it’s been determined where it came from and its value, it’s then “triaged” for viewing at a later time.
They point to the fact that almost 25% of emails that were initially opened on some type of mobile device were later opened by consumers a second time, with 70% of that second opening being on the same device and the remaining 30% on a different computing device.
Even more interesting, researchers found that, for users who opened an email from their computer, on that second opening 65% of them were clicking through.
That’s excellent news for marketers but also points to the fact that optimizing their email campaigns for both opening on email and then interacting later on desktop is definitely advisable because, from the looks of what the latest research has uncovered, it should provide a much higher CTR.
