Half of commercial emails will be opened via mobile by year end

The latest bi-annual "Knotice Mobile Email Opens Report: 2nd Half 2012", should be a warning to brands and marketers that, if emails are not optimized for mobile, they will fail to engage almost half of those emailed.

In the second half of 2012, 41% of commercial emails were opened on a smartphone or tablet, up from just 27% the previous year.

Of the 41% of commercial emails opened on a mobile device, 29% were opened on a smartphone and 12% on a tablet, an increase from 26% and 11% respectively from the first half of 2012.

As in the first half of 2012, iOS devices make up the majority of mobile email activity. Of the 29% of email viewed on smartphones, iPhones accounted for 22% compared to just 6% on Android. Meanwhile, iPads account for a whopping 11.4% of the 12.1% opened on tablets, leaving Android with just over half a percent share.

An interesting finding from the report is that consumers aren't using multiple devices to open email. It is highly unlikely that, if a consumer doesn't act on an email they opened on, for instance, their smartphone, that they will reopen that email on a tablet or other device.

According to Knotice, "only 0.07% of emails were opened again on multiple devices, down from 0.09% during the first half of 2012. This means that even if a compelling subject line was created and the right offer was delivered, if it the email renders poorly on a mobile device or if there isn't a seamless optimization of the post-click experience, there is a missed opportunity with the mobile opener."

Tags: brand marketing, commercial email, email marketing, mobile optimization, smartphone, tablet