Mobile Email Marketing: Stats for Thought

Earlier this week we announced the additions of Google's Android, the Palm Pre and social networking giant MySpace's new webmail service to our eDesign Optimizer (making us the first and only provider to do so, and further distinguishing Pivotal Veracity as the clear industry leader). We did this to address two major trends that are rocking the email marketing world: First, the skyrocketing consumer adoption of mobile smartphones; and second, the increasing convergence and blurring boundaries between email and social networking.

When it comes to the particular platforms we added: Android is poised to become a top two player in the mobile email market, and the Palm Pre boasts a slick look and feel similar to the iPhone, so it's another contender to watch. MySpace, meanwhile, has 130 million users around the world, which means it is another potential force that cannot be ignored (and also a likely trend-setter, of course, with social network sites like Facebook rumored to be following soon with their own open-email offerings).

In this post, I wanted to share some exciting and enlightening numbers specific to the mobile email market, and in a future article will do the same regarding the convergence of social media and email.

• The Radicati Group released new research this week, "Wireless Email Market: 2009 - 2013", which forecast that the number of people accessing email from mobile phones worldwide is going to grow on average 68% each year between now and the end of 2013--from 139 million users to more than 1 billion, in less than 4 years. I cannot point to any other technology that has experienced such an astounding rate of adoption like that in the last decade, if not my entire lifetime.
• UK-based wireless research and consultancy firm Wireless Expertise predicts even larger numbers (within range of Radicati) estimating that the number of smartphones users will approach 1.6 billion by 2013.
• Mobile phones outnumber PCs today by 4:1 globally. (Also from Wireless Expertise).
• ExactTarget released its 2009 Email Utilization survey findings this week, with two very juicy findings related to mobile email: 1) all consumers surveyed reported using email more over the past 6 months, but smart phone users were even more likely to have boosted their use of email lately - e.g., 43% of Blackberry users, and 41% of iPhone users reporting increasing their email use, compared to 26% for non-smartphone users. 2) 40% of college students now own smartphones, and this group also reported an increase in email usage, reversing a 5-year decline for the demographic.

When you put these numbers in context, you realize that the day when more consumers access and interact with email on handhelds than any other device is fast approaching-- and much sooner than you may have previously imagined. Accordingly, email marketers are well advised to start putting into place mobile email marketing strategies that:

• Make identifying mobile email users a priority. Marketers should enable users to self-report mobile preferences as well as take advantage of next generation email tracking technology like MailboxIQ in order to automatically detect when and on which devices consumers are accessing email from while they are on-the-go. Some of our pilot senders found as much as 10% of their email opened on a mobile.
• Take into account handheld design best practices. Pivotal Veracity's eDesign Optimizer can help ensure that your code, links and images work, and that branding and messaging integrity is preserved through the industry's most extensive array of mobile, social, software and webmail screenshots. Gartner released its mobile OS market-share estimate for 2012 this week: 1) Symbian - 37%. 2) Android - 18%. 3) Blackberry - 13.9%. 4) iPhone - 13.6%. 5) Windows Mobile - 9%. Of course, we've got all of these--and much more--covered.
• Contemplate a different user experience.The handheld email experience is much different than the desk or laptop ones. Adjusting to this will take studying, analysis and time - but make no mistake about it, email marketers will need to adjust.

Until next time,

-Jordan Cohen