Don’t Get Left Behind: 3 Ways Email Marketers Can Catch Up To a Mobile World

As an email marketer, you’re probably no stranger to mobile marketing. In fact, whether you realize it or not, you’re already on the front lines of communicating with your company’s mobile audience. For the last several years, more people have been opening emails on mobile devices than on larger screens. And despite the rise of competing communication platforms, email is still considered the most effective digital marketing channel. That said, 27% of businesses aren’t thinking about mobile when it comes to email, as they’re not using responsive design in email marketing at all, and only 17% of companies are truly thinking mobile first, by using responsive design in all the emails they send to customers, according to Yesmail.

Understanding how important it is—and being able—to attract and retain customer attention, to drive engagement, and get conversions all serve you well as an email marketer. And the same savvy and skills will help you make the leap into mobile marketing successfully. As with email marketing, working in mobile will require you to be a data-driven communicator unafraid of learning new technology, understanding and improving your craft with the help of analytics, and keeping up with best practices as they evolve.

Here’s how to get there.

1. Master mobile-first email marketing

The first step? Optimize your emails with eye-catching, mobile-friendly visuals and layouts, and copy with clear calls to action. Beyond that, using predictive and testing tools to figure out the best send time and campaign copy can help you increase conversions by 30-40%.

2.Embrace multichannel marketing and launch a new channel

Today’s customers don’t operate in silos. They’re reading emails, engaging on social media, and using apps interchangeably, and they expect brands to be communicating with them with all channels in mind, which means your marketing strategy shouldn’t be operating in silos either. If you haven’t already, it’s time to embrace multichannel marketing, so you can better understand and connect with your audience across devices (phones, tablets, desktops, and connected devices) and message types (like email, push, and in-app/browser). Getting this right could help you increase customer retention by 130%. One of the most important steps you’ll need to take as you expand beyond email in isolation into multichannel marketing is to create user profiles for your customers so you can track, learn from, and improve your efforts based on their engagement across devices and message types.

Given the importance and effectiveness of multichannel marketing, and as new channels arise, it’s no surprise that marketers today should expect to have to learn new skills, not only to be competitive in the profession but to simply be able to connect with existing customers as they embrace new devices and communications platforms. Predictive analytics tools, which rely on historical customer data to forecast how customers will behave in the future, can help you launch a new marketing channel more quickly by helping you select and send the right communications at the right time to the right customers.

3. Graduate from sending email to sending push notifications

Dating back to 2009 (on Apple devices) and 2010 (on Android), push notifications are no longer brand new, but that doesn’t mean all brands are using them correctly (though we wish they would). In fact, 30% of people we surveyed opted out of push notifications they perceived as irrelevant. This perception is pervasive: 78% of customers report that most push notifications are not relevant.

But push notifications are also incredibly effective, and are a great starting point for marketing getting into mobile channels.

So how can you get it right, especially if you’re just starting out and particularly as push expands to new platforms, including wearables, mobile web, and desktop? Using personalization, communicating with brevity, and demonstrating value and timeliness will be key. Urgent messages and reminding lapsed customers to reconnect with your product will go over well; overly educational and wordy communications are not recommended for push.

What’s next for email and mobile marketing?

Now that you’ve learned the basics, dive in deeper with our guide: The Next Level Email Guide for Modern Marketers.