

According to new data from email marketing provider Yesmail, brands that embrace responsive design for all of their mobile email marketing efforts earn 24 percent more clicks than brands not using responsive design, but only 17 percent of marketers have fully adopted responsive design.

For its Q4 2015 Benchmark Report, Yesmail analyzed the impact responsive design had on mobile and desktop email open and click rates. The data also included mobile commerce numbers, looking at increases in mobile revenue, orders and average order value (AOV) growth.

Yesmail’s findings show mobile email clicks account for 58 percent of all email clicks for brands using responsive design with all of their email marketing efforts. This is a 24-percent increase over brands not using responsive design. (Mobile clicks account for 46.7 percent of all email clicks for marketers not taking advantage of responsive design.)

Mobile Opens and Clicks

More than 50 percent of all email opens are happening on mobile devices, according to Yesmail, regardless of whether or not the brand is using responsive design.

In addition to seeing 24 percent more email clicks, the report found that brands implementing responsive design in all of their emails earn 55 percent higher mobile CTO (click-to-open) rates and 23 percent higher desktop CTO rates.

Responsive email campaigns generated an average of 16.2 percent mobile CTO versus non-responsive email campaigns that generated 10.4 percent mobile CTO. For desktop email campaigns, responsive design emails earned an average 15.7 percent CTO versus 12.7 percent CTO for non-responsive emails.

While it’s clear responsive design practices generate higher email marketing ROI for both mobile and desktop campaigns, Yesmail says marketers are slow to adopt the adaptive design format. The report shows only 17 percent of brands use responsive design for all of their emails, with 38 percent using it for most of their emails.

Twenty-six percent of brands fail to use responsive design in any of their email marketing efforts.

Proportion of Brands Using Responsive Design

Yesmail says the amount of email consumers are receiving continues to grow, with brands sending 10 percent more emails over the last year. It also says CTO and mobile click rates between desktop and mobile are narrowing.

The report revealed that desktop CTO has dropped 29 percent during the last two years, while mobile CTO is up 26 percent over the same time period.

Mobile email clicks and desktop email clicks are nearly even, at 49.2 percent for mobile and 50.8 percent for desktop.

Desktop Versus Mobile Email Clicks

In terms of mobile commerce, Yesmail found that mobile revenue accounted for more than 25 percent of all email-driven revenue and 30 percent of all email-driven orders in Q4 2015, with mobile email revenue up 13 percent year over year and mobile orders up nine percent.

The AOV for mobile orders is also increasing — up 15 percent year over year — but still less than desktop AOV, with mobile AOV at $104 and desktop AOV at $132 in Q4 2015.

Average Order Value YoY Growth

Yesmail’s full Q4 2015 benchmark report can be found at: Do or Die: The Implications of Ignoring Responsive Design.

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