Tag: mobile marketing news

Mobile marketing over email is becoming vital

Of all of the retail emails sent, nearly half are being opened on smartphones and tablets.

According to the results of research conducted by a mobile marketing firm, Knotice, almost half of all retail advertising and promotional emails that were sent during the last two quarters of 2013 were opened using smartphones and tablets.

This represented a considerable increase over the percentage of emails opened on mobile devices before that.

During the first two quarters of 2013, these emails were being opened 43.2 percent of the time over mobile devices. This represents a 13.9 percent increase in the number of emails that are being seen as mobile marketing instead of over laptops and desktop computers. This insight helps to show advertisers how important it is to ensure that their messages and any links that are provided will be compatible with these smaller screen gadgets.

As 49.2 percent of these communications are now mobile marketing emails, it is clear that a tipping point is reached.

Mobile Marketing - emailMobility has now reached an important tipping point as this figure is near enough to half to say that one in every two emails will be opened using a smartphone or tablet. The study that was conducted by Knotice took millions of different retail emails into account during those two half year periods in order to come up with the data that it has recently published. Knotice is a mobile marketing unit of IgnitionOne Inc.

At the moment, the devices that are used to pen the largest number of retail emails are Apple’s iPhone and iPad. That said, it is important to note that Knotice measured the opening of an email as the successful rendering of the images in the message. As the “on” for image rendering in emails is the default setting with which all Apple products are shipped, and as “off” is the default setting for many Android devices, this could cause the natural bias to be skewed toward Apple’s devices.

Equally, though, a growing body of evidence is also showing that Apple devices lead the way when it comes to acting on mobile marketing by registering, participating, and purchasing, so it could be that these are the most relevant devices, at the moment, when it comes to m-commerce.

Mobile ads are growing in use but marketers are still slow to accept them

Advertisers have yet to warm up to this technique as they have yet to be convinced of the receptiveness of consumers.

Despite the fact that the rate of smartphone ownership is skyrocketing throughout the Middle Eastern region, and while mobile ads do seem to provide a tremendous amount of opportunity for marketers, those firms remain hesitant about its use as they have yet to receive adequate evidence to suggest that consumers will be entirely receptive to it.

This has led advertisers in the region to hold a lukewarm opinion of mobile marketing, at best, so far.

According to the Arabnet digital hub founder, Omar Christidis, “Mobile is probably the underserved segment and it is probably the most over looked opportunity in the market today.” This, even though the use of mobile ads is growing at an extremely rapid rate. However, when compared to other channels, there is still a considerable difference in the amount of money and resources that are being dedicated to marketing over smartphones and tablets.

It is only recently that spending growth for mobile ads has started to close in on other channels.

mobile ads and consumersChristidis also pointed out that “If you look at time spent on media versus ad dollars, the largest gap will be seen in mobile. This was the gap that existed even in developed markets until recently.” However he reminded that if the stats are examined, then it would show that the amount of for every ad dollar spent, there is more time spent viewing the advertisement is notably lower among mobile device users than it is among print readers.

Gartner has recently released a report that showed that by the end of this year, the amount of money spent on mobile advertising would reach the $18 billion mark. However, in the Middle East, that figure will be only $20 million. This is a measly statistic when taking the penetration of smartphones into consideration for that region.

However, the Criteo managing director of Eastern Europe and MEA, Dirk Henke pointed out that “It is very similar to advertising on desktop when it started.” Mobile ads appear to be following the same path as the original online advertising when it was in its infancy.