Study: Consumer E-mail Behavior Varies by Industry

To optimize consumer e-mail response, marketers must adjust strategy for consumer behavior that differs by market vertical and device use. So they'll find valuable guidance in Movable Ink’s "US Consumer Device Preference Report: Q1 2017" report on how opens, conversions, engagement and even order values are affected by market vertical and device preferences. For all industries studied—retail, travel and hospitality, financial services, and media/publishing and entertainment—the report found most e-mails are opened on a smartphone as opposed to a tablet or desktop. Smartphone e-mail opens have especially jumped for financial services, up 7% from the fourth quarter of 2016 to reach 70% of opens in the first quarter of this year. However, retail is not far behind, with 61% smartphone opens for apparel and 57% for non-apparel e-mails. While smartphones still led opens, the more content-heavy media, publishing and entertainment vertical also has a good portion of desktop e-mail opens at 32%, followed by travel and hospitality with 29% desktop opens. Tablet opens are also stronger for media and publishing at 18%, higher than any other industry.Mobile optimization is clearly key for open rates, but retailers should not neglect desktop design because that's where the orders are racked up. Non-apparel retailer e-mails attribute 73% of conversions to desktop use, for example, with 51% of conversions on desktop for apparel retailing. Desktops also deliver the highest average order value for retailers: $171.04 for apparel and $138.57 for non-apparel sales. When it comes to e-mail reading time, the study generally found that iPhones are able to capture more attention than Android mobile phones, Android tablets, desktop computers, or iPads. The finance industry had the longest read lengths on iPhones, with 68% of subscribers spending 15 or more seconds reading their e-mail thanks to the Apple devices. Media, publishing and entertainment e-mails also garnered high iPhone read time, with 61% reading e-mail for 15 seconds or more. For more, see http://www.acculistusa.com/study-how-consumer-e-mail-behavior-varies-by-market-vertical/

Use the Weather Map in Your Geo-targeted Marketing

Is your geo-targeted marketing in sync with the weather map? A Business2Community article recently reminded marketers that they should leverage weather as a variable in geo-targeted campaigns. Although author Ruthie Ackerman provided examples based on this winter's snowy and icy conditions, geo-targeting by weather variables can be applied to summer sizzlers, too! Retailing, travel and hospitality industries, and online banking are three areas that can use weather news to their advantage, she pointed out. For example, rather than cursing the polar vortex this past winter, smart apparel stores push cold-weather items, travel industry ads entice frigid consumers with a tropical vacation, and online banking could tap browser history and real-time e-mail to offer helpful vacation savings calculators to fund that tropical getaway. See the full post at http://www.business2community.com/marketing/leverage-weather-geo-targeted-marketing-campaigns-0773590