Mobile marketing is increasingly become a more important issue to marketers and business owners alike. With more and more consumers performing Internet activities, such as browsing and shopping just to name a few, on their mobile phones and devices, marketers have began to add a few extra dollars to their mobile marketing budget. One significant impact that mobile marketing is having , is its impact on email marketing. As the mobile market continues to grow, so does the way we view and interact with email. According to a recent study done by Return Path; a company who specializes in email marketing solutions, mobile is drastically changing the email market. To begin,the study took a look at Smartphones across different countries including The US, the UK, Germany, and Brazil. According to the study more than 50% of all mobile phones in the US are Smartphones, the UK came in 2nd at 38%, Germany in 3rd place at 34% and Brazil ranking last at 30%. These numbers indicate that SmartPhones are increasing in popularity across countries and it’s safe to say that these numbers will only increase as time goes by.
According to the study 88% of people check their email on a mobile device daily, what is even more interesting is that if all the US mobile Internet time was condensed to 1 hour, 25 minutes of that time would be spent on email. It also makes sense that the study found that the day of the week influences how consumers view email, with desktops being the most popular for weekdays; when most people are at work, and mobile devices on the weekends. For all you Apple lovers, the study also concluded that 85% of mobile email is read on an Apple device. Mobile is definitely changing how and where we view our emails, it is also changing us as consumers. The study concluded that more than 50% if US consumers have made at least one purchase using their Smartphone and have done so in a response to a marketing message that was delivered via a mobile email.
With statistics like this it is important that marketers dedicate time for both their email marketing and mobile marketing strategies. In order for marketers to tap into this ever growing mobile market they must optimize for it, but unfortunately some marketers have yet to put a real mobile strategy in place. The study concluded that over 40% of marketers still do not know how many mobile subscribers they have. If you do not know how many users you are reaching on mobile subscribers you have then you cannot optimize for them. The study also found out that 63% of Americans and 41% of Europeans said that would either close or delete and email not optimized for mobile. With numbers like this, marketers cannot afford to miss out on this key audience. Mobile marketing is definitely empowering the email revolution, and in order to profit from mobile, marketers must be willing to make some changes and optimize for this growing audience.
