I was looking at some statistics and reports recently and it really got me thinking about the implications that it could have on the email marketing industry.  In the next couple of posts, I will be looking at two of the biggest factors that may very well shape the email marketing world for the future.

According to facebook, a quarter of their users access their accounts through mobile phone devices and are twice as active as regular users.

The figures have risen from 5 million users in 2008 (source) to 150 million in 2010 (source) with 50 million of those new users coming in the last 6 months.  This, it seems is just the beginning.  With Android software being open to all phone manufacturers, there is a flood of affordable Smartphone devices coming into the market leaving these figures undoubtedly rising further.

In a presentation earlier in the year, Mary Meeker, head of global technology research at Morgan Stanley, forecast that mobile browsing would surpass desktop browsing within the next 5 years.

So what does this have to do with email marketing?  Well, if there is an increase in mobile usage, there will be a drop in actual PC/Laptop usage times.  That drop in usage I attribute to the casual Internet user.  The main goal when they usually log on is to have a quick check of their Social Networking, Email, and one or two select other sites that they will always visit.  Ultimately though, their agenda isn’t more than that.

In the past, a good number of these may actually end up aimlessly surfing the Internet for a long period of time as they have no real purpose to the session – a point where they would be more susceptible to marketing messages and exploring around the site and beyond their original intentions.

With mobile users, if they are intending to search for an item to buy, they will be more specific in their searches.  You will see browsing times drop, due to a lack of browser capability compared to desktop browsers.

Research from late last year also backs up this claim, stating that “60% of consumers have encountered a problem when accessing a website from their mobile phone during the past 12 months”. 

The main factors that caused this are:

• Slow load times (73%)
• Experiencing errors and crashes on the mobile site (51%)
• Formatting of the mobile site makes it difficult to use (48%)
• Mobile site not functioning as expected (45%)

With no unlimited amount of tabs and browsers running simultaneously, users would get frustrated trying to mimic their actions on a desktop browser, so their habits will consequently be different.

This does though, throw up opportunities for email marketers; ones that are already in place.

Recipients more tuned in?

Whilst the mobile browser will have a decrease in ability to browse, this also decreases the amount of things they can be doing at the same time.  This could lead to users paying more attention to your message than before, as long as it is readable and you have got your timing right….

For more on mobile email design, check out this style campaign blog, a great resource for design ideas.

Landing Pages

If the mobile browser user experience is an issue in conversion rates, then it is a marketers duty to ensure that this problem is limited as much as possible.  Landing pages optimised to mobile browsing is the best available solution, and so should be considered in the planning process.  Furthermore, sites that retain their customers details such as billing and delivery addresses being automatically loaded after the user supplies email address and password, will also help in limiting the users poor browsing experience.

The importance of timing

With mobile email marketing, you are potentially plugged into contacting them all the time.  The timing of when they will be receptive though will differ to that of a send to a desktop recipient.

Maybe your mobile recipients are on the train home from work and with not much else to do, will pay much more attention to your message than at any other point.

On the other hand, you could catch them out with friends, and if the email is not relevant it could be instantly dismissed.

Timing will be incredibly important and something that will have to be tested to get the most out of your campaigns.

If we’re looking to the future, I can envisage the sending process of email marketing evolving to be more intuitive to each subscriber; more of an advanced trigger mechanism based on  the subscriber’s past history opposed to a bulk send, which is the usual way to carry out an email campaign now.

Less is More

If we’re going to look at the best way to achieve success from mobile recipients, we are going to be looking at shorter email campaigns, with straight to the point content.

Indeed, Mary Meeker in her presentation even notes that “One of the implications of mobile access is a growth in ecommerce, featuring things such as location-based services, time-based offers, mobile coupons, push notifications, etc.”

Coupons, location specific and time limited offers could be a lot more effective with mobile marketing, catching people on the move and enticing them into your store, bar, restaurant, event etc.

Less may also mean more in the case of sending frequency, with a useful statistic drawn from the comprehensive guide on mobile email over on Mark Brownlow’s blog post (well worth a read) that stated “mobile email users less tolerant of higher-frequency emails than “traditional” email users”.  Although I personally believe that this doesn’t necessarily have to be the case and that this is drawn from people receiving desktop emails to their mobile devices; I’ll be going more into frequency strategies in my next post.

The way company’s carry out direct marketing has started to change over the past few years.  There are obviously still a lot of companies that consider direct marketing to be sending brochures and offers to a mailing list, either via snail mail or email (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I’ll come to that point in another post).

The more socially aware marketer though, will be portraying more of a company personality in their communications.  As mentioned in my previous post, with email reputation monitors now judging on user interaction with your messages, it would favour you to portray your company personality as approachable and responsive.

A great way to do this is to use Social Media sites such as Twitter or Facebook.  These accounts you can use on a daily basis, and keep in touch with your followers, which should consequently boost your emails response rates, and success.

Your company personality should be considered carefully though.  It’s something that can win customer loyalty, but carried out incorrectly it can have the reverse effect.

Take a look at the Fly53 Twitter account and you will see that they are quite open and talkative – they don’t just offer away special offers but talk with their followers on a very basic level of anything that interests them.  This approach can work for a company like them as their target market wouldn’t consider this unprofessional.

But something like the BAE Systems Twitter account could never take that approach as its purpose is to update business clients on latest developments.  Entering into general conversation would be considered unprofessional.

Considering your organisations profile and ensure that your social and email personality is an extension of that profile is the key to a successful online marketing campaign.

Also, making sure you know your customers and what they want will help in shaping the integration of your social and email campaigns; something that I will go into detail in my next post.

Email Marketing, as with any technology based industry, is constantly evolving.  Recently though, through major software releases and changes to protocols from ISP’s, it has become a bit clearer what the future has in store for the email marketer.

This series of short posts will start to skim the surface of where the industry is leading…

Segmentation and Relevancy

Okay this advice isn’t anything new to people who regularly read this blog or other email marketing articles, but it is getting more relevant as we progress through email marketing.

Make your emails relevant to each of your customers and don’t just create a single universal view of your whole list.  According to this report by Forrester Research,  companies that highly segmented their lists, saw results outperform that of non segmented lists by up to 5 times.

It doesn’t take someone with a Masters in marketing to see that although everyone on your list is interested in your products, it may only be certain aspects they’re interested in.  If you continually miss out their interests in your mass mail to your whole list, then they will switch off from your communications.

A great example of this is a previous post I wrote which also advises using passive segmentation to help start your list splitting.

Email Interaction

The noreply@ or other such addresses that discourage responses to your emails is coming to an end now. The majority of subscribers are on social media sites and to them, companies are no longer faceless brands.

Many companies are now contactable and post out information and try to interact with their customers throughout the day – not just posting sales promotions but asking questions and encouraging responses as well.  The ASOS Twitter account is a good example of this that springs to mind.

With email reputation monitors not just judging your emails inbox placement on complaint rates alone, but also the engagement of the list that you’re sending to (Opens, Clicks etc), it would seem that Interaction is the logical progression.

Couple this with recent technologies such as Outlook’s Social Connector and you can start to see how the future is shaping up for not just email marketing, but online marketing as a whole; the rise of the “Pull Customer”……

One of the main drawbacks that I can see with the rising popularity of smart phones is the knock on effect it will be having on conversion rates for email marketing.

I personally know that I receive a lot of marketing emails and do read a good majority of them on my mobile.  I will see products that I like and am interested in knowing more about, but I’m not about to go through the hassle of searching for a product online with my mobile – I normally just say that I’ll look at it later on and then forget about it.

I’m pretty sure I can say with confidence that I’m not the only one who does this and it must be having a detrimental effect on a good proportion of businesses email campaigns.

Using triggered emails though may very well help to combat this problem by allowing the user to ask for more information on a certain item or just the whole newsletter at a different time.

Simple links like “send me more about this later” could be placed underneath each product and then you specify a time delay that will hopefully catch them at a more receptive time.

Alternatively, having a link up at the top of the email asking for a reminder later on or actually giving options on when they want to receive the email again may also help you from losing your recipients to being put off from purchasing on a mobile.

There is of course a challenge to this.  We as email marketers are suddenly faced with inserting a myriad of links to cater for all our recipients situations.  Would it be too much? Thoughtful designing would have to come into play to make sure that the look of your email isn’t being compromised.

It is something that could be dropped into the design though opposed to the little links at the top as the benefits can be further reaching than just mobile users.  Most recipients won’t go through the process of purchasing items at work so they could then set themselves a preferred time to receive the email with triggers used this way.

Do you think that you’ve lost customers to mobile emails?  This might be a viable solution to you; there’s only one way to find out though – test, test, test….