Report: Mobile Now Driving 36 Percent Of All Email Opens

Reading email is one of the primary activities of smartphone owners. Indeed, several reports over the past year have indicated that more and more email interaction is happening on mobile devices. Adding to that narrative Knotice today released its latest Email Opens report covering the first half of 2012. Since 2010 the company has documented […]

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Reading email is one of the primary activities of smartphone owners. Indeed, several reports over the past year have indicated that more and more email interaction is happening on mobile devices. Adding to that narrative Knotice today released its latest Email Opens report covering the first half of 2012.

Since 2010 the company has documented the rise of mobile email, which obviously corresponds to increasing smartphone penetration in the US.

Screen Shot 2012 09 10 At 1.59.20 PM

Source: Knotice (9/12)

The report benchmarks everything to PC open rates and related email marketing data. The PC still dominates most email interaction and sees 64 percent of opens overall. However, mobile (tablet + smartphones) sees the other 36 percent. That’s up from 27 percent at the end of last year.

If the current pace of mobile email growth continues nearly 45 percent of “on the go” consumers will be reading email on their smartphones or tablets by this time next year. Indeed, Knotice recommends that email marketers “begin planning for a point in time when mobile users will be the majority audience.”

Email Open Rates:

Screen Shot 2012 09 10 At 2.07.16 PM

Screen Shot 2012 09 10 At 2.07.27 PM

Source: Knotice (9/12)

For reasons that aren’t entirely clear or explained iOS devices dominate Android when it comes to open rates.

Screen Shot 2012 09 10 At 2.11.03 PM

Source: Knotice (9/12)

Knotice says that iOS and Android, in the US, “account for 99.19 percent of all mobile email opens.” Financial services and consumer services (whatever that means precisely) were the two categories that saw the highest percentage of mobile opens.

Screen Shot 2012 09 10 At 2.13.54 PM

Source: Knotice (9/12)

Knotice added that “the distribution of [email] opens occurring on phones is more heavily concentrated within the first 3 hours following email delivery . . . Knotice data [also] reveal email engagement by phone is significantly higher in the first 90 minutes, with negligible differences between phone, tablet and desktop email engagement after approximately 5 hours.”

Accordingly the Knotice report had some basic “best practices” recommendations:

  • Embrace a “mobile first” mindset
  • Recognize that now, by default, email marketers are effectively mobile marketers
  • Know your mobile audience (via data and analytics)

Finally Knotice tries to explode the “myth of multiple opens” where multiple devices are allegedly used to look at or revisit the same emails. In a retail case study, Knotice found that very few emails were revisited on a separate device.

Screen Shot 2012 09 10 At 2.30.17 PM

The implications of all this are fairly straightforward: take mobile seriously and be ready to optimize email campaigns for an increasingly large mobile user base. For marketers that are complacent or skeptical of mobile, there’s a chance that email campaigns not optimized for mobile will simply no longer be seen.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Greg Sterling
Contributor
Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.

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