Most Email Still Viewed on Desktops: Harte-Hanks

6/26/12

By Ken Magill

Amid all the buzz about the skyrocketing viewership of email messages on mobile devices comes a report that the majority of email messages are viewed on desktop computers.

Also, the percentage of email viewed on mobile devices varies widely from business sector to business sector, according to the report by direct-marketing services provider Harte-Hanks.

In a study of seven categories of email messages, Harte-Hanks determined that only in the category of entertainment emails did mobile viewership surpass 50 percent.

Apple mobile devices accounted for 41 percent of entertainment email viewership, Android devices accounted for 11 percent, and “other mobile” accounted for 2 percent, bringing the total mobile viewership in the category to 54 percent, according to Harte-Hanks.

But even though the desktop still dominates in most categories, mobile viewership is not to be dismissed in any of them, according to Harte-Hanks.

“[I]t is an imperative that marketers continue to optimize their HTML emails for viewing on smartphones,” the report said. “At the end of March 2012, most categories had already experienced a 5–10% lift in mobile viewership” from the end of 2011.

The category with the lowest mobile email viewership was pharmaceutical messaging at 14 percent, according to Harte-Hanks’ Postfuture Index.

The category with the next lowest mobile email viewership was technology at 19 percent, according to Harte-Hanks.

Consumer packaged goods emails also scored relatively low in mobile viewership at 22 percent, according to Harte-Hanks.

Thirty eight percent of financial messages and 36 percent of retail emails are viewed on mobile devices, according to Harte-Hanks.

Thirty four percent of automotive emails are viewed on mobile devices, according to Harte-Hanks.

In all categories, Apple devices dominated mobile viewership over Android, ranging from almost double in pharmaceutical messages to almost four times higher in entertainment messaging, according to Harte-Hanks.

“Overall, Postfuture emails are being viewed on mobile devices 30.5 percent of the time,” said the report. “The majority of those views are on Apple mobile devices, with the vast majority of those on the iPhone.”

The report also covered other benchmark metrics, such as average opens and clicks. Access the whole thing here.

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