New research shows more emails will be read on mobile devices than both desktop or webmail by the end of 2012, but most marketers still haven’t figured out their mobile strategy.
The research comes from email certification and reputation monitoring company, Return Path, their study “Email in Motion: Mobile is Leading the Email Revolution,” that tracks mobile platforms’ impact on email viewership. The research shows the growth of mobile continues and the trajectory clearly shows that mobile devices will be the predominant platform for email consumption by the end of 2012.
In the UK, there is a 38% penetration of smartphones, no doubt this will continue to increase. 88% of us check our emails on our mobile phones daily, however 41% of Europeans would close or delete and email that was not optimised for mobile. Despite this 48% of marketers still don’t know how many mobile subscribers they have.
“The future of computing is mobile. Our data clearly shows the trend for email consumption: more and more people are using smartphones and tablets and moving away from PCs and desktop,” said Matt Blumberg, CEO at Return Path. “Despite this, a recent study by Econsultancy* found that nearly half of marketers don’t know how many mobile subscribers they have. Marketers that don’t have the basic data they need to figure out their mobile strategy will likely lose out.”
For those still slightly skeptical or overlooking their mobile audience, a survey by ExactTarget revealed more than one-half (56%) of US consumers have made at least one purchase using their smartphone after receiving a marketing message delivered via mobile.
Return Path examined data from October 2011 to March 2012 from nearly 500 different clients and examined more than 1 billion data points using its Campaign Insight tool, that tracks which platforms and email programs subscribers use to read email.
Further results are highlighted in the infographic below:
