Staggering Mobile Email Growth Doesn't Dent Desktop Readership

A recent research survey by ReturnPath, entitled "Email on the Move: The Future of Mobile Messaging," sheds considerable light on the critical role email marketing plays in the proliferation of mobile Web-enabled devices. The data included in this survey is of immediate relevance to any business’ email marketing campaign, as the entire paradigm of email readership is consistently shifting to the mobile arena.

The Desktop Is Still King, but Mobile Is Catching Up

The survey found that the desktop (which includes laptops) is still the leading source for email reads, with fully 36 percent of all email being opened on clients which reside exclusively on “conventional PCs.” Just under half or 16 percent of that total is opened on clients which are mobile in origin, and 48 percent is opened on webmail.

In the latter statistic it was not possible to determine whether it was a mobile or PC that accessed it, but a very approximate assumption could be made that twice as many PCs as mobiles used the webmail interface. This calculation would place the total percentage of emails opened on PCs at 68 percent and mobiles at 32 percent.

Desktop Email Use Is Extremely Skewed Towards Macs

While Outlook was the preferred PC client at 63 percent of all usage, Apple Mail came in second at a staggering 31 percent. This percentage seems to be next to impossible as Mac has only 4.5 percent of total market share as compared to Windows’ 93.9 percent. For this survey finding to be accurate, it would mean that Mac users are opening nearly 7 times more emails than their Windows counterparts.

That seems to stretch the imagination, but the point can be made that the Apple computer owner is likely a greater consumer of email messages than the typical Windows user, although the proportion is best left undefined at this time.

81 Percent Growth in Mobile Email Access in Just Six Months

The mobile Web-enabled device explosion has certainly made a dent in the overall email reading market, as the growth in access has blossomed 81 percent from October 2010 when it was well under 10 percent to March 2011, the date of the survey data correlation. An interesting side note to this statistic is that the growth in mobile email access has come primarily at the detriment of webmail access, as the percentage of desktop client use seems to be holding fairly steady.

Desktop & Mobile Use Seem to Inversely Mirror Each Other

The graphs for email access via conventional PCs and mobile web enabled devices are almost exact opposites of each other. They start out nearly even on Monday morning with desktops steadily climbing to their peak and mobiles to the bottom of their trough on Wednesday. Directions reverse until the lines cross on Friday, when the traditional PCs get mothballed for the weekend and mobile use skyrockets, peaking on Saturday and then slightly falling off on Sunday.

“I for One Welcome Our New Tablet Overlords”

Due to holiday purchases of iPads and other tablets as gifts, email viewership on these types of mobile devices spiked from just over 14 percent in December 2010 to nearly 21 percent in the very next month! This nearly 50 percent jump in just one month is nothing short of astounding and it points to the huge market niche that tablets led by the prodigious iPad are carving into the overall mobile computing sphere.

The conclusions which can be garnered from this research survey are that although your customers are not abandoning their desktops and laptops, they are relying on a much wider variety of mobile means to stay abreast of their email reading. The rate of uptake of mobile Web-enabled devices is unparalleled in the history of computing, and all indications is that there is no end in sight.

These findings clearly point to the necessity to ensure that your overall email marketing newsletter campaign and the email marketing services you use are balanced to cater equally to both desktop/laptop and mobile users. It has never been more important to ensure that your messages can be properly experienced on a variety of devices and screen sizes than today.