Report: Marketing Emails Opened On Mobile Devices Jumped 61% To 65% In Q4 2013

The number of marketing emails opened on mobile devices continued to climb last quarter according to email marketing provider Movable Ink.

The company’s US Consumer Device Preference Report for Q4 2013 claims 65 percent of marketing emails were opened on mobile devices during the last quarter of 2013, up from 61 percent during third quarter.

While mobile open rates climbed, Movable Ink’s research showed the number of desktop marketing email opens dropped four percentage points between the third and fourth quarters of 2013, from 39 percent to 35 percent.

Pulling data exclusively from Movable Ink’s client base of “large, enterprise B2C marketers,” the company reported 48 percent of the marketing emails opened on mobile devices happened on a smartphone, with 16 percent of opens occurring on tablets.

Movable Ink also broke down marketing email open data by type of device, revealing the largest share of mobile opens – 35.39 percent – happened on an iPhone.

Accounting for 50 percent of the marketing emails opened on a mobile device, Apple’s iPhone and iPads beat out the number of opens by Android devices. Even though Android’s open numbers fell short of Apple’s, Movable Ink claims Android’s numbers were up 10 percent from Q3 2013.

With the holiday season greatly impacting Q4 2013’s email marketing numbers, Movable Ink reports, “Thanksgiving was the biggest day for smartphone use over the holiday season, whereas Cyber Monday was the biggest day for desktops.”

The report also measured the amount of time users spent reading marketing emails on mobile devices and desktops, discovering iPhone users spent the most time on their device, with 38 percent of them spending 15 seconds or more viewing individual messages.

Android smartphone users weren’t too far behind with 35 percent spending 15 seconds or more reading emails on their device.

When looking at marketing emails open rates across the US, Movable Ink tracked a steady decline in desktop use, with six states reporting heavy desktop use during the second quarter of 2013 to no states showing heavy desktop use by the fourth quarter of the year.

By observing how this map has changed over the past three quarters, it is apparent that smartphones have made steady gains against desktops across the country.

For state to state marketing email open rates, Movable Ink claims Texas has the highest percentage of email opens on smartphones, while Maine leads for highest percentage of desktop opens.