Mobile Email Marketing – Does Responsive Design Pay Off?

Do you use responsive design in your email marketing? If not, the results from a recent mobile email benchmark report may convince you that it’s time.

The email-marketing solutions provider Yesmail’s Email Marketing Compass benchmark report provides year-over-year analysis of 2013 and 2014 fourth quarters and evaluates more than 6.8 billion emails sent by both business-to-business and business-to-consumer organizations. Similar to other studies, this benchmark report clearly demonstrates a rapid growth in mobile email conversions. It also uncovers evidence that responsive design has a significant impact on driving email conversions.

Mobile Conversion Rates Increase by 70%

The following results highlight how many people are now using mobile devices to make purchases:

  • Mobile conversion rates (i.e., purchases resulting from an email click on a smartphone or tablet) increased by 70%. This compares to a drop of 4% in desktop conversions during the same period.
  • Mobile revenue accounted for 20% of all email-generated revenue.
  • Mobile clicks experienced a 10% year-over-year increase, now accounting for nearly 40% of all email clicks.
  • Mobile click-to-open rates increased 20% year-over-year compared to desktop rates that increased by only 6% during the same time period.

How Does Responsive Design Impact Email Conversions?

As we described in a previous NewsLever article, responsive design is the use of such techniques as media queries and fluid images and grids to provide an optimal viewing experience across various platforms and screens. For example, media queries detect a device’s screen size and subsequently activate a different set of rules based on it.

In its benchmark report, Yesmail attributed much of the mobile email-marketing success achieved over the last year to more marketers using responsive design. According to the report, responsive design was used in 37% of mobile emails sent during the fourth quarter. The data also showed email marketers who used responsive design achieved a click-to-open rate of 14.1%, which was 40% higher compared to brands that sent only nonresponsive emails.

How to Optimize Your Emails for Mobile

If you haven’t already optimized for mobile, now is the time. In addition to using responsive design, there are a number of other ways to help ensure that your emails are mobile friendly, including:

  • Making sure the font size and calls to action are big enough to read on a small screen
  • Minimizing the use of too many images and design elements that can slow down the download time
  • Keeping copy concise and easy to scan
  • Testing your emails across a wide variety of browsers and devices to ensure they render properly
  • Optimizing your website landing pages for mobile, as well.

For more information about responsive design and best practices for mobile email marketing, click on the following links:

Mobile email users likely account for a large portion of your target audience. So to be sure you’re getting the best results from your email-marketing campaigns, contact the experts at FulcrumTech. We can help you implement mobile-friendly and responsive email design to help optimize conversions and boost your email-marketing return on investment.

Other Articles You Might Like

Sign Up for NewsLever

Our free, monthly email newsletter

NewsLever is our free, monthly e-newsletter for B2B and B2C professionals who want to develop and implement powerful email-marketing campaigns that build relationships with prospects and customers.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Privacy Policy|Learn More|Current Issue