Despite Mobile Email’s Growth, 58% Of Email Marketers Not Designing For It

There’s a disconnect between how consumers are reading commercial emails and how marketers are conducting email marketing campaigns.

On one hand, there’s the report earlier this week that says 41 percent of all commercial email is opened on mobile devices — a number that’s expected to surpass PC/desktop opens by the end of the year.

On the other hand, there’s the new 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report from Marketing Sherpa that says more than half of email marketers aren’t designing their emails with mobile devices in mind.

Almost 1,100 marketers took the survey and, of that group, 58 percent said they’re not creating emails to render differently on mobile devices.

Obviously, it’s possible that some of those 58 percent already find that their emails function well on mobile devices and they don’t think they need to design differently.

But here’s another sign of the disconnect between email marketing and consumer activity: Only 21 percent of the marketers surveyed say they integrate the mobile channel with their email campaign.

There might be good news on the horizon, though — 58 percent said that the pervasiveness of mobile devices will have an impact on their email marketing efforts in the coming year.

Whether that impact is good or bad may depend on how well the two charts above change. It’s clear that more marketers need to account for mobile when planning and executing email campaigns.