UK Marketing Emails Fail to Make Mark on Mobile
Of emails opened by consumers, the vast majority of them (72%) are opened on a desktop
August 21, 2013
Despite an increasing proportion of time spent on mobile devices, email seems to be wedded to desktops in the UK. According to December 2012 research from Pure360, 72% of emails were opened on a desktop, a further 20% on a smartphone and 8% on a tablet.
And for the clickthrough rate of marketing emails, the performance of mobile was also lower than on the desktop, which had a 27% CTR. Rates were 7% on smartphones and 3% on tablets.

Although consumers clearly skew to the desktop to read their emails, research from comScore shows that checking email is the third most popular activity on a mobile phone, beaten only by camera and SMS. With 25 million email users on a mobile phone in the UK—a greater number than social network users—this is a not insignificant population. Overall, email campaigns continue to deliver good return on investment (ROI).

In Europe’s three biggest markets—France, Germany and the UK—email is the preferred channel to receive marketing messages, beating TV and direct postal mail, either the second or third preference in each market. Of course, checking your email does return to consumers a level of control, whether to open the message, delete or leave until later before opening it. There is clearly an opportunity here to make more compelling propositions for consumers, fight for more clicks, tap into this market consumers prefer and already engage in large numbers, but email budgets are increasing, suggesting new tactics to land those clicks.
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