Smartphones And Email

Mobile email usage has skyrocketed. According to OurMobilePlanet, 31% of Americans own smartphones. And more than 81% of those smartphone users are checking email. That’s a lot of people!

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed an impressive uptick this past year. At the beginning of 2011 I was seeing about 20% of my email campaign subscribers opening up my emails on mobile devices. Towards the end of 2011 that number has risen to 31%. My sample size is small at around 500 subscribers. But, still, it’s easy to see that mobile is quickly taking hold.

The take-away is that we need to be designing our email campaigns so they look great and perform well on mobile devices, as well as other email clients. When someone clicks on a link in your email, there’s a good chance they’re reading it on a smartphone. And that means they’re going to click through to see the landing page in a mobile Web browser. What is your mobile Web site exprience like?

Ultimately, we have to examine our own subscriber lists and meet people where they’re at.

• What do our subscribers use to open email?
• Can we segment our email campaign subscriber lists based on email client usage?
• Is there a special experience we can design for our growing mobile customer base?

What does the smartphone market penetration look like? This recent graphic from Nielsen gives us a quick breakdown:

Related posts:

1. A Social Approach to Email
2. Email Campaign Open Rates