Though mobile email viewership is steadily rising on a month-to-month basis, it plummets on Mondays, according to a study released today by email security and deliverability firm Return Path.

The drop apparently coincides with people getting back to work and interacting with email at their desks.

Likewise, mobile email viewership peaks on Saturdays and Sundays when people are opening messages at home, according to the study.

“Things are changing rapidly and marketers need to pay attention to where people are reading their messages,” said Tom Sather, director, professional services, Return Path.

Mobile email viewership increased 34 percent from April to September, Return Path reported.

Moreover, viewership of email on iPads shot up 73 percent between April and September, Return Path determined. However, email marketers shouldn’t start designing primarily for the iPad just yet. The device accounts for just 4 percent of email views, according to Return Path.

And though mobile’s overall email viewership is heading steadily upward, webmail is still king and desktop applications are No. 2, according to the study.

As of September, 44 percent of email was viewed through webmail accounts such as Yahoo! and Gmail.

By comparison, 33 percent was opened on desktop applications such as Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail, and 23 percent was opened on mobile devices, the study determined.

“People are reading their messages on multiple devices now,” said Sather. “You need to make sure your message translates clearly across them.”

Sather said the variety of devices on which people view their email should make marketers rethink their email design approaches.

“Every marketer puts in ‘If you’re reading this on a mobile device, click here,’” he said. “And that’s the only thing you can see on the iPad and the iPhone. That’s your preview. Marketers should rethink that because if that’s all they’re seeing, it says nothing about the contents of the email. That’s kind of a legacy from Blackberries.”

Sather added that the percentage of email readership on the various devices will vary from marketer to marketer so it’s important for individual senders to try and determine how their subscribers are accessing their messages.

Says the study: “As many automobile industry pundits like to say, ‘your mileage may vary.’ A company with a heavy teen audience, for example, might see a pattern very different from this chart [showing industry benchmarks]. Gather the campaign data specific to your audience, then design your sending strategy accordingly.”

In last month’s column, Julia Peavy listed “Explosive Mobile Growth” as her final prediction for the email space in 2012. Also in December, Ken provided some insight on the changes in mobile viewership. So, let’s take the bull by the horns and start talking about how to start optimizing your email campaigns for mobile use.

1. You need to know how important mobile is to your viewership. Learn what percentage of your subscribers is viewing your emails on a mobile device. This will help dictate how to prioritize your mobile optimization efforts this year. If you don’t have access to this information, it may be time to invest in a solution that provides this data.

2. Review how your emails currently look on various mobile devices. What works for the Blackberry may not look great for the iPhone. If your email reporting tells you the breakdown of which devices are being used to view your campaigns, even better. Use that data to help guide your design.

3. Look for differences in mobile viewership between campaign types to help prioritize. Maybe transactional messages get opened more than promotional messages. Maybe promotional messages get viewed more often than newsletters.

4. Be concise. With a much smaller screen, you have to get to the point much faster for mobile viewing. Shorten article or product description copy.

5. Remember that people are using their finger, not the more precise mouse, for clicking. While you may want to fit as much as possible into a small space, resist the urge to place calls to action too close together. After a few too many misses, a subscriber may get frustrated and move on. You’ll need to find the right compromise.

6. Narrow the width of your email to reduce horizontal scrolling.

7. Don’t forget the subject line. Mobile inbox views may allow subscribers to see less of your subject line. Make sure your most important words are listed first.

8. Test, test, test. Use a preview tool to see what your campaigns look like across devices. Then go one step further and use the devices themselves to open, scroll and click on the links. Your QA team should have one of each of the most popular devices on hand for testing.

9. Keep an eye on the trends. Only 4 percent of email is viewed on iPad right now, but viewership went up 73 percent between April and September which means that market share is likely to grow quickly.

Stephanie Colleton is Director, Response Cosulting at email-certification and reputation-monitoring-services firm Return Path.

Download V12′s Guide to Mobile Design WHITEPAPER: Top 10 Mobile Design Tips for Email

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Attrition rates for email marketing lists will continue to challenge marketers well into 2012. The never-ending battle to forge past advancing spam filters, engage recipients and maintain subscribers just add to the email wars. The DMA estimated that marketers spent $1.6 billion on Can-Spam compliant commercial email in 2011. That number will likely increase for 2012 so the focus on email marketing and keeping recipients happy will be paramount in helping to maintain an arsenal of valuable opt-in email addresses.

Can-Spam compliance is a top priority to stay in accordance with laws that require email marketers to receive permission from individuals before communicating with them via email. This process is referred to as ‘opt-in’. Every email must provide an accurate ‘From’ line, subject line, a physical mailing address and provide a clear way to opt-out of future messages. Therein lays the challenge where marketers must give the option to leave a mailing list or ‘opt-out’ of all future messages…but that’s the worst possible scenario for e-marketers (aside from the dreaded Spam button). An email recipient who opts-out is a lost sale and eliminates any future opportunities to communicate with that consumer.

If you are losing a significant number of consumers from your lists, assess and examine the following areas of concern:

Relevancy

Have you selected the right target audience for your campaign and is the information relevant to them? Consumer profiles, segmentation and modeling can help you better define your targets so you can pinpoint interests, tailor your messages, and predict buying behaviors which will help to reduce overall opt-out rates. Using surveys and polls is another great way to determine what most appeals to your audience (ie. sales, exclusive email only events, in-store offers)

A relevant email is a read email and drives the recipient to take a positive action(to buy) and lessens the chance for a negative action (opt-out).

Frequency

Many marketers bombard customers with too many emails which lessen their impact, annoy recipients and lead to higher unsubscribes. V12 Group recommends a send frequency of 7-10 days to avoid list fatigue, opt-outs and increased complaints to ISPs. However, this will vary by sender and recipient engagement so tread lightly and carefully watch those metrics as you begin to increase the frequency. Try not to overwhelm your lists with several emails over a short timeframe since this will lead to an increase in opt-outs.

Set Expectations with a Preferences Page

It’s impossible to avoid all opt-out requests BUT handle it with enough finesse to cleverly avoid them leaving your list completely. Offering some alternatives to stay in touch by customizing a preferences page allows the user to control and change the options to best suit their needs and wants. Perhaps they only want one email a month, or wish to only receive exclusive sales by category. Consider asking if you can email them in a year to see if they want to hear from you again. This step is well worth the investment if you have an unexpected rise in opt-outs and have addressed the 2 points noted earlier.

Below is a sample page of the most creative way SEARS handles opt-outs which includes a series of video skits.  Giving consumers the choice to change and set their preferences just may save the opt-out.

Strategic marketers will assess how much is a subscriber worth and realize that they must focus their efforts on managing opt-outs to better maintain email lists for both prospecting and CRM campaigns. It is to be expected with every campaign that a number of recipients will opt-out or unsubscribe but pay attention to those numbers carefully or they can spiral out of control leaving you with higher than average attrition rates. Need more help…contact V12 Group for a consultation.

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Millions of Americans oppose SOPA and PIPA because these bills would censor the Internet and slow economic growth in the U.S.

Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA.

The Senate will begin voting on January 24th. Please let them know how you feel. Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late.

TAKE ACTION HERE

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Saturday marked a major victory for opponents of proposed anti-piracy legislation Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), which would target foreign-based websites violating U.S. copyrights.

House of Representatives bill SOPA and its Senate counterpart PIPA are designed to punish websites that make available, for example, free movies and music without the permission of the U.S. rights holders. Opponents of the bills, however, worry that the proposed laws would grant the Department of Justice too much regulatory power. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has called the measures “draconian.” Other Internet giants who oppose the bill include Facebook, eBay, Mozilla, Twitter, and… (read entire post here)

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You might also want to read: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/01/14/obama-administration-responds-we-people-petitions-sopa-and-online-piracy

On a previous blog post about marketing tests, a commenter asked for some examples of great landing pages. We’ve received that request more than once and figured it’s about time to deliver! So I set out to find some of the best landing pages out there, and to get started, I went to some of my favorite companies. I figured they might be a great place to start because as a marketer, my favorite companies have to not only have a great product or service; they have to be great inbound marketers. Whether you’re B2B, B2C, a product or a services business, these five companies have created great landing pages from which we can learn some serious lessons.

To help hammer those lessons home, I’ve also included suggestions for how these landing pages can be improved even more. These suggestions are based on landing page best practices, and don’t take into account that sometimes, you can shirk the best practices based on the results of A/B and multivariate tests. I have no insight into whether these companies have run tests to reach these designs (many probably have!) but the lesson for all marketers is…
Read entire post here: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30561/5-Awesome-Landing-Page-Lessons-From-Real-Life-Examples.aspx#ixzz1jHMDy2mC

Image credit: tungphoto

Click here to download a Complimentary Copy of the Whitepaper

1. New Customer Prospecting/Acquisition:

• Lead generation
• Sales
• Brand/awareness building
• Grow mailing list

2. Customer Retention:

• Transaction confirmations
• Account summaries
• Newsletters/news alerts
• Promotional

People unfamiliar with email marketing often wonder what all the fuss is about. Didn’t spam kill email as a marketing vehicle? And if spam didn’t kill it, what about blogs, Twitter and all the other clever ways we can communicate online? Isn’t email outmoded?
Those wondering about the benefits of email marketing in today’s ever-changing online and marketing environment will find the answers below.

IT WORKS
Businesses engage in email marketing because it works. And works well. Here are the numbers…

According to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generated an ROI of $42.08 for every dollar spent on it in 2010. As such, it outperforms all the other direct marketing channels examined, such as print catalogs.

• In Datran Media’s 2010 Annual Marketing & Media Survey, 39.4% of industry executives said the advertising channel that performed strongest for them was email. This was the top result.
• The Ad Effectiveness Survey commissioned by Forbes Media in Feb/March 2009 revealed that email and e-newsletter marketing are considered the second-most effective tool for generating conversions, just behind SEO.

The money is following the results…

• A December 2009 survey of 300 email marketers by Silverpop found that their companies were feeling the effects of recession, but “four out of 10 marketers reported that their email budgets in 2010 would increase, and nearly half (47 percent) said their budgets would stay the same”.
• A November 2009 survey of B2B marketers found that email marketing was likely to see more spending increase than any other form of online marketing bar website development.
• A Q2 2009 survey of over 5,000 senior US executives revealed that email marketing was the channel most likely to see an increase in marketing budget.
• 46% of North American small businesses surveyed in 2009 by Hurwitz & Associates use email marketing, with another 36% planning to do so in the coming year.

WHY IT WORKS

Email marketing works for a variety of reasons…

• It allows targeting
• It is data driven
• It drives direct sales
• It builds relationships, loyalty and trust
• It supports sales through other channels

Modern email marketing services and solutions support database integration, segmentation and various other tricks and techniques for improving the targeting of outgoing messages. Advanced methods generate on-the-fly emails customized down to an individual recipient basis.

And every email campaign you send out generates a heap of actionable data you can use to refine your approach and messages.

Email promotions and offers generate immediate action: sales, downloads, inquiries, registrations, etc. Informative email newsletters and other emails send people to offline stores and events, prepare the way for catalogs, build awareness, contribute to branding, strengthen relationships, encourage trust and cement loyalty.

All in all, a pretty good way of going about your marketing business!

In MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Benchmark Guide, it shows that segmented email campaigns produce at least 30% more opens and 50% higher CTR than undifferentiated messages.

How to Segment
You split your email list into groups, where each group has some shared characteristic(s). Then you tailor your email program to each group, with email content, timing and frequency reflecting those shared characteristics.

Inevitably, this boosts responses. And the above numbers confirm this. Anything that lifts the relevancy of your message lifts responses and protects against email fatigue.

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