Mobile email usage statistics

Mobile email is on the rise, as more and more people own a smart phone or a mobile device like a tablet.

We compiled all available statistics to give insight into the current state of mobile email usage.

As these numbers will keep on changing, we will be update them

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Ultimate mobile email usage statistic

The ultimate mobile email usage stat, this is all you really need (party disclaimer at the end of this post).

More detailed mobile email usage statistic

17.71% of users will open email on a mobile device once or more per month. With iOs devices like iphone, ipad and ipod account for 16.01% and Android for 1,70%. These are non-exclusive stats, as many people use more than one emailclient. Campaignmonitor –”Email client popularity” (June 2011)

16 to 26% of Europeans will check email on a mobile device once or more per day, depending on country. 26 (NL, DE) to 40% (UK, Italy) of Europeans check email on their mobile at least once a month. eCircle – “European Social Media and Email Marketing Study” (Dec 2010) See chart

Mobile Email open rates differ very heavily per industry with relative differences up to 300% and more. Retail has the highest average opens with 20.08% on mobile devices. B2B (3.03%), Entertainment (7.63%) and Associations (9.05%) display the lowest mobile open rates. – Knotice “Mobile email opens report” (2010)
Per e-mail 9.29% of total opens comes from mobile devices, 49.81% from a desktop environment, , and 29.96% from webmail. The remaining 11% or so are opening using the web version of the email (the “view as a webpage” link), an undetectable email client, in Facebook messages, or using the web browser on their mobile device. Litmus– “Big thanks to Justine Jordan metrics”  (June 2011)

Year over year, we have seen a 132% increase in the number of emails being opened on mobile devices. Litmus– “Big thanks to Justine Jordan metrics”  (June 2011)

38,5% of mobile internet internet time is spent using mobile email. Nielsen – “Mobile Media View Internet” (May 2010)

Some 70 million US consumers accessed email through a mobile device, with 43.5 million doing so on a near-daily basis. Comscore– “Mediametrix”  (November 2010)

43% of mobile email users check email four or more times per day, compared to 29% of those who do not use mobile email. – Merkle “View From the Digital Inbox 2011″ (2011)

More than 35% of UK smartphone users check their work email address in their free time. 10% do so while on holidays – Firstsource Solutions (July 2011)

Iphone (71.98%), Ipad (14.95%) and Android (8.24%) are the biggest in the Mobile Email market.  See chart Campaignmonitor –”Email client popularity” (June 2011).

After correcting the Campaignmonitor numbers for automatic display of visuals, the corrected Email client popularity is Iphone (42,31%), Android (39,67%), Ipad (9,62%). MarketingXD – “Mobile is 4% of email, not 20″ (2011)

13.36% of emails are opened on a mobile operating system or device. – Knotice (2011)

75% of marketers are planning to add mobile to their marketing mix.  This is not specifically email or advertising related.  Forrester Research – “2011 Mobile Marketing prediction” (2011)

31.6% of US marketers said having an optimized mobile marketing experience for customers is important. – eROI “The Current State of Social, Mobile, & Email Integration” (2010)

22% of US marketers surveyed said that mobile marketing is “very important” to their overall marketing strategy; 26% said “important”; and 28% said “somewhat important.” Only 8 percent said mobile marketing is “not important.” -R2integrated “Mobile Media Survey” (2010)

More than one-half (56%) of US consumers who have made at least one purchase using their smartphone have done so in response to a marketing message delivered via mobile email -  ExactTarget “Mobile Dependence” (2011).

Overall, some 16% of US smartphone owners say they have complete at least one purchase as a direct result of a marketing message they received on their smartphone (including other channels like sms and aps). -  ExactTarget “Mobile Dependence” (2011).

Mobile Email usage varies with the day of the week. With more than average number of opens on Friday, the mobile email is most often used in the weekend. – Return Path “The future of mobile messaging” (2011)

80% of consumers finds reading marketing emails on their mobile less easy than on a PC.
- Edialog “The future of mobile messaging” (2011) Most common complaints were:
* having to scroll across a page to read all the information (15%),
* too much textual content (9%),
* images not rendering properly (8%)
* and a failure for all the information to download (7%).

Special offers (27%), vouchers (21%) and realtime tracking (21%) are most preferred email types to receive on mobile. Newsletters are the fifth most preferred type with 12% of respondents saying they like to view that email type on their mobile the most.
- Edialog “The future of mobile messaging” (2011)

Optimization

14% of companies and 24% of agencies are designing emails specifically for mobile – eConsultancy “Conversion Rate Optimization Report” (2011)

Despite the fact 13% of execs are now primarily checking their email via a mobile device, less than half of websites/emails are optimized for customers to view or respond to via handheld resources – MarketingSherpa “Email Benchmark Report” (2012)

Party disclaimer:

Be sure to share a parties, but know that there are multiple ways of measuring the number of opens and marketsize of mobile email. You could measure all opens, unique opens or opens during a period of time (e.g. during a month)

Also the the average use of email on mobile devices isn’t the same as the use of mobile email for your target audience or email list. The only discussion and party safe mobile email stat, compiled out of all stats available is noted below.