By Chuck Martin
Marketers have a relatively good chance at reaching mobile shoppers by email but they really only get one shot.
The broader news is that almost half (48%) of emails are now opened on a mobile device, based on a recent study. This is an increase from 41% last year and 27% the year before.
But deep inside the 44-page Mobile Email Opens Report by Knotice are some interesting stats around email and retail.
Mobile email openings from retailers increased to 43% from 39% in the first half of the year.
The study found that about half (49%) of emails from retailers are opened exclusively on mobile. This means that if an email is sent while a consumer is in a store, they have a relatively good chance of opening that email on the spot, while they shop.
The report is based on a cross sampling of 500 million emails sent across 11 industry segments during the last half of the year.
By operating system, iPhones lead email activity, accounting for 26% of mobile emails opened compared to 5% on Android phones.
A retailer doesn’t get a second chance to reach customers again if they open the email on a phone while shopping.
The idea that a mobile shopper opens an email from a store on a phone and then opens it later at home on a desktop is just not happening, according to the study.
For all retail email sent, almost all (98%) of it is opened only one type of device, with almost half (47%) being opened on mobile only. More of them (29%) are opened on phones compared to on tablets (20%), making it more likely that an in-store shopper will see the email.
Of course, email is only one of a number of ways for merchants to interact with mobile shoppers.
And as in other methods, such as SMS, MMS and targeted advertising, the value of the message to the shopper better be clear the first time around.
Chuck Martin is Editor of the mCommerce Daily at MediaPost and writes the daily MobileShopTalk column. He is the author of “Mobile Influence,” “The Third Screen,” and “The Smartphone Handbook.” He is CEO of Mobile Future Institute. Chuck Martin is a frequent Mobile Keynote Speaker and Mobile Marketing Speaker internationally. He also addresses Social Media in Mobile.
