Mobile and Desktop Email Click-to-Open Rates Approach Parity

December 1, 2016

yesmail-mobile-v-desktop-email-cto-rates-in-q3-dec2016It’s been a while coming, but click-to-open (CTO) rates on mobile devices look to be finally matching those on desktops, according to the latest quarterly report [download page] from Yesmail Interactive. The convergence owes more to plummeting rates on desktops than big increases on mobiles, though.

The 13.3% CTO rate on desktops in Q3 was down markedly from the year-earlier period (18%), which had in turn been down from Q3 2014 (21.8%). By contrast, the mobile CTO rate has remained relatively steady, with the Q3 2016 mark of 12.7% being squarely in the range set in the prior two third-quarter periods.

Part of the reason why mobile CTO rates haven’t improved quickly seems to be slow adoption of responsive design. Only about 1 in 5 brands used responsive design in all of the emails they sent during the quarter, though an additional 47% sent the majority of their emails this way. Making it easy for subscribers to read and click on marketing emails is paramount, given research indicating that 51% of consumers have unsubscribed from a brand due to its emails or website not displaying or working well on their smartphone, and that 43% have marked a brand’s email as spam for the same reason.

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    Returning to the discussion of click-to-open rates, the analysis shows that mobile CTO rates have actually surpassed desktop CTO rates in some industries, namely entertainment, hospitality/travel and technology. Retail/wholesale is on the cusp, with mobile and desktop CTOs reaching parity this past quarter.

    In other results from the report:

    • – Click rates have continued to decline on a year-over-year basis even as open rates mostly hold steady, a trend consistent with other research into email engagement;
    • – Friday was the best day for email engagement across several metrics including open rate, click rate and click-to-open rate, while conversion rates were highest on Saturdays (as they were in Q2); and
    • – Mobile devices grew to account for almost half (48%) of email-driven orders and one-third of email-driven revenue, driven chiefly by smartphones (40% and 24%, respectively).

    Head over here to download your copy of the report.

    About the Data: The Yesmail report is based on data from almost 7 billion emails sent in Q3 2016 using its platform.

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