Mobile Email Opens Increase 51% in the First Half of 2011

Knotice’s “Mobile Email Opens Report: First Half 2011” highlights a handful of interesting findings, including a surge in mobile email opens in that time period. However, mobile email click-through activity is lagging.

According to Knotice, 20.24 percent of all email opens occurred on mobile devices in the first half of 2011. The iPhone accounted for 12.78 percent of this figure, while the iPad accounted for 3.92 percent, Android accounted for 3.15 percent, Windows accounted for 0.05 percent, BlackBerry accounted for 0.01 percent and Palm accounted for 0.22 percent.

This reflected a 51 percent increase from the 13.36 percent share observed in the fourth quarter of 2010, when the iPhone accounted for 8.74 percent of mobile email opens, followed by the iPad with 2.00 percent, Android with 1.92 percent, Windows with 0.31 percent, BlackBerry with 0.15 percent and Palm with 0.25 percent.

This rapid growth in mobile email opens exceeds previous forecasts, according to Knotice.

The company also broke mobile email opens down by industry segments and mobile operating systems. Consumer services led the way with 30.49 percent of email opens occurring on mobile devices, followed by entertainment with 21.41 percent, cable and telco with 20.42 percent, hospitality with 20.13 percent, retail with 20.07 percent and education with 15.78 percent.

The report also looked at click-to-open (CTO) rates: the “measure of click activity within the email once opened.” Financial services (14.32 percent) was the only industry that had mobile click activity that nearly matched that of desktop email (14.89 percent). Consumer products exhibited the most click activity (18.99 percent).

The lower CTO rates spotlight a growing need for optimization, according to Knotice.

“There are many factors at play here. First, the use case for mobile email openers can be far different than for desktop users,” according to Knotice. “These users may simply be quickly reviewing or even purging an inbox on their mobile device with no intent or time to act. It can also be a result of poor email experiences for mobile users.”

Knotice also looked at mobile email activity by time of day. It found that mobile email opens happen most often in the early morning (5-6 a.m.) or late evening (10 p.m.-4 a.m.).

Mobile email CTO rates peaked at around 1-3 a.m. “While mobile users are opening emails at high rates during the morning and evening hours, they are not necessarily taking action,” according to Knotice.

Source:

http://www.knotice.com/reports/Knotice_Mobile_Email_Opens_Report_FirstHalf2011.pdf