20 Mobile Email Marketing Stats That'll Make You Better at Your Job

By 2022, Statista anticipates that more than 333 billion emails will be sent each data.

To give you an idea of how big that number is, if each email were a star, the cluster would be 50% bigger than the Milky Way Galaxy.

I hope I'm not the only one who thinks the statistic above is mind-blowing.

At this point, email has proven to be a major communication tool for both consumers and marketers. But, as this channel has thrived, mobile technology. such as smartphones and tablets, has also become much more abundant in society. 

And while you might think you have a solid email strategy, a huge portion of your audience might be missing out on your lead-generating content if your emails aren't mobile optimized.

Even back in 2016, when slightly less people had smartphones, most of the consumer population would disregard or delete emails that weren't mobile optimized. Today, mounting research shows that mobile optimization is even more vital to your email marketing strategy. 

But with so many resources, oftentimes in the form of extensive reports, it can be hard to find the time to keep track of important industry stats and information, such as that around mobile optimization.

To help you recognize why you need to optimize your email strategy for mobile, I've put together this list of essential email marketing stats that you should keep in mind.

First, I'll begin with a few general stats that highlight why you need to embrace email marketing in the first place. 

General Email Marketing Stats to Know in 2020

Email Marketing Tactics and Spending

• In the near future, brands are planning to add advanced segmentation (47%), content personalization (37%) and behavioral targeting (39%) to their email marketing practices. (Econsultancy, 2019)
• Last year, 66% of email marketers highlight automation as an important attribute of email solutions, up six percentage points from 60% in 2018. (Econsultancy, 2019)
• The top three areas for email marketers were focusing on in 2019 wereautomated campaigns (37%), personalization (32%) and segmentation (29%). (Econsultancy, 2019)
• On average, email attracted only 13% of company marketing spend in the last year, despite being attributed to 19% of sales. (Econsultancy, 2019)

Email Metrics and Benchmarks

• Globally, the average email open rate was 22.15% in 2019. (GetResponse 2019)
• Average email click-through rate is 3.43%. while th average click-to-open rate is 15.49%. (GetResponse, 2019)
• The average email unsubscribe rate in 2019 was 0.20%, while spam complaints average at 0.02%. (GetResponse, 2019)
• 73% of companies rank email as an "excellent" marketing channel for ROI. (Econsultancy, 2019)

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• The top reason email receives so little marketing spend is that email measurement is skewed towards non-commercial metrics, such as open and click-through rates. These metrics don't always support a business case for email. (Econsultancy, 2019)

Mobile Email Optimization Stats

• 49% of all web traffic was from mobile devices in 2019. (Statista, 2019)
• 60% of email opens are from mobile devices. (Aedestra, 2019)
• Mobile email users totaled 2.2 billion by the end of 2018. (Campaign Monitor, 2018)
• More than 55% of emails are opened on mobile devices. (Leads Crawler, 2024)
• Apple iPhone is the most popular mobile client for reading emails with 29 percent of all opens occurring on this platform.
• Although people primarily check email on iPhone devices, Gmail is still the most-used email service, with more than 1.5 billion users (CNBC, 2019)
• Launching a mobile-responsive email design can increase unique mobile clicks by 15%. (MailChimp, 2019)
• When it comes to Gmail and mobile emails, they follow Apple making up 27 percent of the mobile email market. (Campaign Monitor, 2018)
• In 2016, a report found that 68% to 79% of consumers would delete an email that isn't mobile optimized. This percentage was highest for those over the age of 56. (Aedestra, 2016)
• The average percentage of email clicks by PC users was 72% and 18.5%. for mobile users. (MailChimp, 2019)
• 9.3% of email clicks come from tablets, rather than smartphones or computers. (MailChimp, 2019)

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Embracing Mobile Optimized Emails

The stats above tell a compelling story.

Although general email is still the preferred mode of communication for the majority of consumers, and a major revenue generator, you shouldn't forget about your huge mobile audiences when sending out your campaigns.

To learn more about mobile optimization, as well as how to execute a successful and revenue-generating email strategy, check out our Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing. 

Editor's Note: This blog post was originally publishied in Dec. 2013, but was updated to reflect the current mobile email landscape and research in June 2020.