Posted by: Grant Garcia, Marketing Coordinator
Historically, email has been a great way to effectively maintain customer contact, while also providing useful industry news and resources. However, because online marketing is evolving and becoming more competitive, inboxes are overflowing with messages that are poorly targeted and irrelevant to users. How, then, do you get your message to rise above the clutter? Incorporating social media and mobile marketing into your email programs can enhance contact with customers at different touch points, while also encouraging interaction.
Companies are utilizing social media calls to action within their email marketing campaigns but are lagging in the implementation of mobile-optimized email. Business emails often include the “Like us on Facebook” or “Follow us on Twitter” buttons, but that’s not enough. According to a recent eROI survey, 63% of marketers say that they’re not even measuring the use of mobile devices for email subscribers. In the same survey, nearly 15% of marketers said that optimizing email marketing for mobile is not important. These statistics are frightening considering that 70 million smartphones are currently in use, with predictions that they will overtake traditional phones within the next 12 months, according to Technewsworld.com.
Then why are marketers slacking on mobile? Mobile marketing is difficult to launch, maintain and measure. Few marketers have the knowledge to develop mobile programs and, according to Marketing Profs, only 31.6% believe that having mobile-optimized email is important for their audiences.
Mobile integration will increase as email conversions diminish. Smartphones will take over the mobile market very soon, and marketers will be forced to reach out to their customers in different ways. People are utilizing mobile based online applications like email and social media more frequently, and in order to remain effective, marketers will have to shift their methods of maintaining customer contact.
