The mobile reality in email marketing: How should email marketers prepare for smartphones?

04.05.2010
The fact that smartphones are more and more integrated into the Internet as an additional method of access is obvious. But how important are they now for email marketers? And which mobile devices cannot be ignored?

How important are smartphones for email marketers?
We have lately focused on these questions a lot. We investigated the use of smartphones by our customers from different fields and target groups using random samples.

The result has surprised me in its clarity: an average of four percent of all newsletters are read on a mobile device. Newsletters about family, baby and child are on the lower end of the spectrum with two per cent. On the upper end with a staggering 11 percent are lifestyle newsletters. This appears logical since smartphones, and particularly the iPhone, are typical products for a lifestyle target group.

Four per cent of mobile readers is definitely a relevant number. This means that we as email marketers must face up to this mobile reality.

A separate version of the newsletter for local and mobile email programs hardly leads anywhere as I have already written in my last blog article “mobile challenge in email marketing”. Newsletters must be optimised so that they look good both on local interfaces and on mobile devices.

What smartphones should you consider?
Newsletters must be examined to see whether they are correctly displayed in order to optimise smartphones. Advocates of the sledgehammer approach buy one of every smartphone and view their newsletters on every one of them.

It is more intelligent to first identify the really relevant devices among existing smartphones and then optimise only for the ones selected. That is, for those devices that are used by a sufficient number of newsletter readers.

This is exactly what we analyzed. What do you think who is in the race: Windows Mobile, Google Android, BlackBerry, iPhone – or Nokia, Symbian, Palm Pre? Ask your colleagues how many of them have an iPhone, an Android or a BlackBerry.

The result somewhat matches the distribution that we have discovered: Almost all mobile newsletters are read on iPhones. Even the BlackBerry, which is more often encountered in business environments, has hardly made any gain at one per cent. All other smartphones have negligible rankings. Find out whether this distribution applies to your newsletters in the reports of our email marketing solution Inxmail Professional.

This fact has a totally pleasant significance for us marketers: If the newsletter can be correctly displayed on the iPhone, then the “mobile” challenges have been met for the time being. This includes, for example, using the pre-header successfully.

But be on your guard. Google Android and the new Windows Mobile 7 will definitely catch up. You will surely hear about them in due time in our Newsletter.