Despite the countless forms of digital marketing that have arisen constantly over the years, email still stands strong as an internet marketing veteran. Clickthrough rates for email advertisements have never been so low that email would ever be completely forgotten by the advertising industry, though they have been slowly slipping lately. Still, though, email has rooted a high relevancy in digital marketing. The recent problem with email marketing, however, has been the way people use email on mobile devices. Mobile has now taken the top spot in digital marketing, allowing for social, email, and search to work side-by-side with it. Search and social platforms have optimized well for mobile devices, but email has not kept up to speed with mobile with the same success.

In one of their articles revealing data from their report, “Email Marketing Benchmarks: Key Data, Trends and Metrics,” eMarketer writes,

Email open rates in North America have risen in recent quarters, even as clickthrough rates (CTR) have been slipping. Data from Epsilon and Email Experience Council for the last two years showed clickthroughs fell below 5% for the first time in the first quarter of 2012. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that email is still highly relevant to consumers in the US.

They continue to reveal how relevant email actually is by stating their estimation that nine out of ten adults in the United States use email at least once each month for the rest of this year. They forecast that by 2016, this gigantic audience will have continuously grown for four straight years. With an audience that comprises over a third of the country’s population already, email will stay a relevant source for internet marketing for many years to come.

However, none of this is really news to anyone. What is news, though, is that more and more of the country’s email users are starting to access their emails on mobile devices, mainly because marketers are using mobile email conquer the challenge of, cutting through the breadth of messages flooding inboxes.” eMarketer reported that 36% of emails around the world are now being opened on mobile devices and that most marketers still haven’t optimized their emails for mobile devices. In the article, eMarketer reported findings by StrongMail, saying that only 22% of marketers have started using mobile-optimized templates for email marketing. For the amount of email marketing that takes place today, this is a significantly low percentage.

Optimizing for mobile is a big part of many marketing platforms, and being that email marketing is such a largely used platform, it is surprising that so little marketers have started using optimization tactics. In their report, eMarketer explains the ways in which those who have optimized have successfully done so. They include things like using mobile optimized landing pages, capturing mobile numbers upon email sign-ups, using mobile-optimized templates, and cross-channel email or SMS campaigns. They explain some other methods in their article, stating that,

 Marketers that are diving into mobile email optimization have different goals and, as a result, their efforts represent different levels of ambition and complexity.

Written by Michael Levanduski

Michael Levanduski is a news reporter at Performance Marketing Insider. He’s been a writer at one level or another for the past 15+ years. He has three kids and lives in Grand Rapids, MI.

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