If you send customer emails, you’re already on mobile

Mobile has become one of those giant marketing monsters that both intrigues and frightens anyone running a business. It’s all about apps, right? And you have to have a coding genius on staff if you want an app, right? And I have to redesign my whole website and make it skinny, right? So it will show up on a phone? And there are different kinds of phones, so how do I know if it’s working on both iPhones and Androids. . . and isn’t there another kind of smartphone out there? And what about tablets!

At that point, most people just walk away and leave it for another day. But the truth is, if you’re sending out marketing emails, you’re already on mobile.

LiveIntent would like to point out a couple of interesting facts:

Email is the most popular activity on mobile.

In an online survey conducted by IDC and sponsored by Facebook, the majority of respondents (78%) reported using email on their mobile device – which was more than web browsing (73%) or Facebook (70%).

23% of every mobile Internet hour is spent in email.

If the time spent on the Internet via mobile was distilled into 1 hour, 14 minutes would be spent in email, beating out both social networking (9 minutes) and entertainment (8 minutes) by a significant margin.

 

Night and Day

LiveIntent’s new report “Email Everywhere: Adapting to the Mobile Nature of Email” also includes this interesting chart. It compares email clicks and conversions on desktops vs. mobile.

The white, dotted line represents “ideal performance”. The blue line are the clicks, yellow is conversions. Both mobile and desktop actions peak in the afternoon and drop off after four. But the desktop conversions do a deep dive into the evening hours where mobile actually has a small lift late at night. These are the people who are browsing with a mobile device while watching TV or even after they’ve gone to bed. They’re in relaxed mode which is an even better time to hit them with an offer.

Think about it. George checks his email at noon because he’s in work mode. He’s expecting a quote from a contractor and an update from his assistant and oh look, there’s an email newsletter from that store with all the great fishing gear. Nice. George may open the newsletter but his mind is mainly on work and only partially on fishing.

Compare that to 9 at night. George is watching Deadliest Catch while lounging on the couch with his feet up and his favorite beverage in hand. During the commercial break, he pulls out his phone just to relieve the boredom and checks his email. There’s a newsletter with deal from his favorite fishing gear store. Excellent. He clicks through and before the Deadliest can haul in another load of crab, George is taking advantage of the 20% off coupon. That new fishing reel is on the way!

There’s only one thing that could put a tangle in his line – an online store that doesn’t look right or function properly on George’s smartphone. As much as he wants that reel, what are the chances that he’ll get up, go to his computer and log on to shop?

Exactly.

The moral of this story is that your customers are already using mobile to shop. The only thing stopping them from buying from your store is you.

If a business is to survive, they must learn to adapt and that’s a much easier word to handle than ‘change’. Change implies a complete overhaul but ‘adapt’ means you simply need to make a few tweaks in what you’re already doing. Forget apps. Forget mobile advertising and Vine videos. Before you do anything else, just make sure your website works on mobile. Do that and you’re more than halfway there.

 

 

 

If you send customer emails, you’re already on mobile