Prioritizing Mobile in Email Marketing Strategies

April 21, 2012

Email marketing isn’t dead yet. In fact, response rates to well-crafted email marketing messages can be very good. eMarketer has reported that email ad spending in the United States will reach $140 million in 2012, and annual growth rates are expected to be approximately 3% to 4% for the next several years.

A February 2012 survey of U.S. consumers by BlueHornet revealed some useful statistics that should help brands develop better email marketing campaigns that drive higher results in the near future. For example, the study found that more than 95% of consumers who join brand email lists do so to get discounts. You can see the specific statistics below related to why consumers join brand email lists and see for yourself that discounts are by far the driving factor.

Consumers subscribe to brand email lists to:

Receive discounts = 95.4%
Get product or service updates = 56.5%
Because they love the brand = 56.1%
Participate in product research = 38.2%
Other = 1.3%

If your email marketing messages don’t include discount offers, then you’re not meeting consumer expectations, wants, and needs. Naturally, every email that you send doesn’t have to include a discount, but customers are looking for those discounts. Don’t disappoint them.

Furthermore, don’t send emails to your customers if they haven’t opted-in. The BlueHornet study revealed that 75.8% of consumers don’t think it’s appropriate for brands to send them emails after they purchase products and provide their email addresses during the purchase process. Instead, ask consumers if they’d like to opt-in to receive emails from your brand. The “brand-customer” relationship isn’t enough to give companies the green flag to fill consumers’ email inboxes. You need to ask first, no matter what your relationship with consumers is like.

Finally, approximately 70% of consumers who participated in the BlueHornet study indicated that they view emails on a mobile device before or instead of viewing them on a laptop or desktop computer. Your brand’s email marketing messages must display properly on mobile devices to achieve the highest results. 70% of mobile device users who responded to the BlueHornet survey said that they delete emails that don’t display properly on their mobile devices. 75% said that email messages that don’t display properly on mobile devices cause them to have negative feelings toward the brands that send those messages. You can avoid those problems and increase the return on your investment by making sure your email marketing messages are configured to display properly on mobile devices.

It’s also important to note that 51.7% of respondents to this survey indicated that they are at least somewhat likely to share email messages from brands on their mobile devices. And since more than half of survey respondents also indicated that they’re likely to make a purchase from an email that they read on their mobile devices, the importance of crafting well written and well designed email marketing messages can’t be stressed enough. This medium works, and strategizing mobile and social behaviors into your email marketing campaigns will give you better results every time.

Image: Agne Kveselyte

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Susan Gunelius

President & CEO at KeySplash Creative, Inc.

Susan Gunelius is the author of multiple marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and blogging books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, a leading blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com, a featured writer for Forbes.com, and the Guide to Blogging for About.com. Additionally, her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, FoxBusiness.com, WashingtonPost.com, TheStreet.com, SmartMoney.com, TodayShow.com, BusinessWeek.com, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Small Business, and more. She has nearly 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Susan also appears at in-person and virtual events where she speaks about marketing, branding, social media, and more (visit www.SusanGunelius.com for more information). You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.