Emails that don't render on mobile are ignored

The report, from Epsilon and the Direct Marketing Association's Email Experience Council, reveals that email open rates in the first quarter of 2012 increased 12.6% year-on-year, with an overall open rate of 26.2%.

At the same time, click rates decreased over Q1 2011 (5.2%), but continue to remain established over the last two years.

According to Epsilon and the DMA, the main reason for the drop in click rates lies with the rise in use of mobile devices to read email. Limited screen sizes and shorter attention spans demand that email is mobile optimized or, as is evidenced by the study, consumers will simply abandon any efforts to interact with the content.

"As sophisticated marketers today strive to deliver, in real-time, personally relevant content via the individual customer's preferred communication medium, they need to ensure their email creative and content are optimized for the mobile web," said Judy Loschen, Vice President of Digital Analytics at Epsilon.

"Email can be the ideal means to seamlessly connect marketing initiatives, especially as more and more customers access email on their mobile devices, staying connected around the clock."

A Return Path study, released in May this year, found that mobile email views are up significantly year-on-year. From March 2011 through March 2012, mobile email views rose 82.4% with 88% of people checking email on their mobile device on a daily basis.

As the Epsilon/DMA research suggested, Return Path found that almost two-thirds of Americans and 41% of Europeans simply close or delete an email that doesn't render well on their mobile device. That's a lot of lost customers.

Tags: consumer behavior, email abandonment, email marketing, mobile device, mobile marketing, mobile optimization, research