By now, good marketers know that email campaigns are an essential part of a successful content strategy. But simply building your list is just the beginning. Now more than ever, brands need to adapt their email strategy to reach mobile consumers. A recent study found that more than 30% of consumers access email exclusively from their mobile devices–meaning your email may never even be seen on a desktop computer. Email use on mobile devices is so prevalent, in fact, that Adobe’s 2013 report Retail Apps and Buying Habits found that more people (79%) use their smartphones for reading email than those who use it for making calls.
Consumers relying increasingly on mobile are coming to expect seamless interactions with brands across all of their devices and platforms, and savvy brands are designing their emails accordingly.
What many marketers fail to realize, however, is that the most important part of engaging consumers through email marketing is not the email itself–it’s what happens next.
In order to maximize ROI from your email campaigns, you need to consider the experience that is delivered once the user has answered your email’s call to action. In other words, where your email is sending them. Most often, the user will be sent to a page where they will need to continue to interact with your website (by filling out a registration form, adding an item to their shopping cart, etc.) before they complete the conversion. This is where having a responsive site is absolutely critical. Even if the email itself displayed correctly and got them this far, sending mobile users to a page that is not optimized for mobile greatly decreases their willingness to continue interacting with your site, and an overwhelming majority of them jump ship before they complete a conversion.
By providing an optimized user experience at every touchpoint (from email to landing page to shopping cart and beyond), you will create ongoing (and effective) user engagement that will build brand loyalty and improve your ROI.
