The only thing more remarkable then the explosion of mobile technology, is the rapid speed in which it has happened. Did you know that the number one usage of smartphones is to read emails! Yes, smartphone owners are more likely to read emails than make calls or check their Facebook status.

iPhone vs Android Email Stats
When it comes time to review your email marketing stats, you may notice that iPhone users typically show higher email open rates than Android phones. Typically we can see 2x-10x more iPhone opens than Android opens.  Is this because there are more iPhone users ? Not quite. Android phones have larger market share in the US (see table ) and even higher globally. Then how does this make sense?

The key reason is that iPhones have their images turned on as a default while Android phones have images turned off  by default. As you probably know, email marketing vendors (including OpenMoves) track opens by using a hidden pixel placed in an HTML email in one of the images. Once the images are downloaded for the email, an open is registered and reported. This clearly skews the opens data  for an email where the images were not downloaded or if the email was a text version.

If you compare iPhone and Android click-through rates (clicking after the email has been opened) the data is more consistent, as click-throughs are registered the same way in both operating systems.

Check Your Results
When you review your stats, take a look at your openers and clickers and check the % of users on a mobile device (example screen shot from OpenMoves OM3 Platform). Whether you are a b2b or a b2c firm, you will continue to see an increase in your mobile readers as smartphones become more prevalent.

Mobile Optimization
A few quick tips for mobile viewing:

• Make sure subject lines and titles are mobile friendly (shorter is better)
• Your email design should utilize a narrower design (drop the sidebar)
• Larger call to action buttons and images

And maybe experiment with responsive designs that can  render the email based on screen size (its like having two designs for the same email). This is also a good reminder to design your emails with a good text to image ratio and make sure you have a readable and succinct text version of the email for those readers that do not download images. And before sending, make sure to test your design for mobile rendering, and check if the destination page (whether your home page or a landing page) is well designed for mobile viewing, meaning short and succinct with large buttons (so you don’t need to “pinch” the screen).

If you need some help understanding your statistics or need help with your new mobile friendly campaign give us a holler.