Study: Nearly Half of All Emails Were Opened on Mobile Devices in Q2 2013

According to a report from Yesmail, nearly half of all emails the company sent in the second quarter were opened on mobile devices (i.e., smartphones and tablets). However, click-to-open (CTO) rates on mobile are significantly lower than on desktop computers, spotlighting an opportunity for marketers.

“Yesmail’s Email Marketing Compass: The Mobile Effect” analyzed more than 5 billion emails sent by the company in the second quarter. One of the key findings is that 48.6 percent of email opens happened on mobile devices. Nevertheless, as mobile inches closer to becoming the medium where the majority of email opens happen, marketers appear unready to truly take advantage of the trend.

That’s because the average CTO rate (defined as the number of people who click on an email after opening it) for emails across industries on mobile was 11.1 percent, less than half the 22.6 percent CTO rate for emails opened on desktop computers.

“This means consumers open emails on their mobile device half the time, but don’t take any action,” Yesmail notes in its report. “However, when the same emails are opened on a desktop, consumers interact with them at a considerably higher rate. This finding suggests marketers are missing an opportunity to effectively engage with customers who interact on a mobile device.”

Yesmail also found that 61 percent of active users (i.e., users who have opened an email in the last 90 days) view emails either exclusively on mobile devices or on both mobile and desktop. The company also found that a third of consumers are device-agnostic, meaning they view emails on both desktop and mobile interchangeably without a commitment to one platform over the other.

The report lays out email CTO rates by industry:

Yesmail also lays out email viewership preference by industry:

The company points out the difference between B2B and B2C email viewership preferences, noting that B2B desktop vs. mobile preference is split almost exactly equally between desktop only and mobile only. The explanation Yesmail offers is the preferred mode of business for B2B email users. “Whether they are on the road or at a desk, the primary device a subscriber uses to conduct business remains more consistent than the one used by consumers on their personal time.”

Yesmail expects 60 percent of consumers to be smartphone users by the end of 2013, which means fewer of them will be viewing emails solely on desktop screens. “The prominence of hybrid viewership indicates that subscribers are choosing to respond via the most convenient device at the time they receive the message, regardless of device preference,” according to the company. Consequently, it recommends that marketers take this hybrid behavior into account when crafting their email experiences.

A recent report from SimpleRelevance found that though consumers open emails throughout the day, 62 percent have a preferred one-hour time period for actually clicking through emails to get to a marketer’s website. The company notes that the growing prevalence of mobile email opens might explain why emails are often opened but not clicked.