Sending 5 billion emails in the second quarter of 2013 provided YesMail with a lot of insight about what works and what doesn’t in email marketing, and they’ve compiled those insights into a report, YesMail’s Email Marketing Compass: The Mobile Effect. As indicated by the title, email marketing is undergoing rapid changes that are almost wholly caused by the monumental shift from PCs and laptops to mobile devices for reading email.
Key findings from the report:
- 61% of consumers either use mobile exclusively for accessing email or use mobile and desktop interchangeably
- The hospitality and travel industry is has a click-thru rate of 23.4% while B2B is stagnant at 1.5%
- 49% of all email is opened on a mobile device
Mobile devices may be the go-to device for consumers, with half of all email marketing messages being opened, but when it comes to engagement, emails opened on a mobile device click-to-open (CTR) rates are 100% lower than emails opened on a desktop. When consumers do open email marketing messages on a desktop, they are 100% more likely to interact in some way with the email message. There is particularly high disparity in the CTR rate between mobile and desktop for healthcare, B2B, and CPG industries.
The one industry in which CTR rates improve on mobile is consumer services. YesMail suggests this is because consumer services are typically web-based and consumers are comfortable engaging online and from a mobile platform to begin with, so they are more likely to continue to do so with emails. This industry is also more likely to have optimized their email for the mobile device, making it easier for the consumer to engage.
The opportunity this report highlights, then, is for other industries to adopt a mobile-based email marketing campaign that makes it not only easier but more likely that consumers will engage with the emails they do open via mobile. For the B2B community, there is a significant opportunity to engage more effectively, since YesMail’s research shows that B2B clients prefer mobile more than any other industry but healthcare. With a near 50/50 split of mobile vs. desktop preference and one of the lowest mobile CTR rates, B2B organizations have the potential to transform their email marketing campaigns by optimizing them for mobile.
While the key takeaway from this research is that mobile optimization is crucial for all industries and especially for B2B, content still matters. In fact, with the right content, multiple emails per week did not deter engagement. YesMail’s key recommendations include:
- Mobile optimization
- Improving customer understanding
- Improving deliverability through regular maintenance
If you’re interested in making a bigger impact with your email marketing efforts, contact us.