Increased use of smartphones in our daily lives has made email communication direct, faster and omnipresent. According to the Adobe Email Survey 2016, people are spending 17 percent more time on emails year over year, with the increase being even larger in work email. Forty-five percent of people use their smartphone to check their work email, with the percentage rising to 63 percent for personal email.
It’s the mentality of the “always on” culture that creates a sense of urgency for a reply when receiving a new email message, with 16 percent of people expecting a response in just a few minutes. In fact, their expectations turn into reality, as 14 percent of people actually end up responding within a few minutes.
Content marketer Tereza Litsa recently shared these tips for improving email effectiveness on the digital marketing website ClickZ (clickz.com).
Find the right balance of promotional emails. There are many things that marketers need to improve when reaching consumers, but almost half (47 percent) find annoying the frequent branded emails (see chart).
Be mindful of mobile issues. There are different issues to consider when creating an email for smartphone users. As mobile usage increases, it is becoming crucial to consider what really annoys consumers. Although there isn’t a dominant trend annoying users in mobile emails, there are many in almost equal percentage, which could imply a series of problems marketers need to solve. The most important are:
· Loading time
· Image size
· Lack of mobile optimization
· Long emails
· Small font size
· Lack of video
Email is preferred
Consumers may be annoyed by many things when receiving branded mails, but they still prefer them as the main form of hearing from brands. There is even an increase of 9 percent year over year on their preference, with direct mail being way behind and a brand’s mobile app coming third.
Phone calls seem to be the least preferred method of communication when communicating with brands and the percentage is even reduced since last year, which is a useful reminder for marketers who may still find the idea of direct communication appealing.
Respondents also said that less than 25 percent of emails are interesting enough to open, indicating that marketers need to up their game. Top consumer issues with marketing emails are frequency, quality of writing and offers based on incorrect profile data.
“Email marketing is still effective, and it’s encouraging that users prefer it as the method to receive messages from brands, but they are still demanding enough to expect relevant and interesting content,” Litsa says.
