In the beginning--the beginning of the Internet, that is--marketers were limited in how they reached their audiences. One option was the tacky pop-up ads that peppered Web 1.0, while the other was blanket emails sent to pretty much any existing email address.
Mobile market advertising has put an end to those days, instead creating a new age of permission-based engagement for which users must opt-in to a contact list before receiving marketing material. While mobile has put a virtual end to unsolicited emails, this hardly means email marketing is over. Email is actually an important component of a quality mobile marketing campaign.
Why? The answer is simple--smartphones! Mobile marketing was restricted to SMS before smartphones become popular, but now 48% of emails are read using mobile devices, and 30% of consumers read mail on their smartphones only! Mobile email access has overtaken desktops as the way to read mail, with more people using their smartphones for email than anything else.
This trend isn’t going anywhere, either. According to The Radicati Group, mobile email use is predicted to increase 28% in 2014 and 23% in 2015. Unlike days of yore when unsolicited emails were immediately sent to spam folders, today 56% of U.S. consumers making purchases with their smartphones do so after reading email.
Mobile marketing ad strategies can utilize this email data to their advantage. For example, a simultaneous text and email blast can double the precision impact of SMS thanks to detail-heavy content from email. Another option is sending a text alert requesting people check their email for a time-sensitive free offer. Going the time-sensitive route often makes it more likely a person will check his or her email and go for the deal.
Any successful marketing campaign features an array of tactics rather than using only one option. Using email and text together results in different types of business from a variety of channels!