ExactTarget has released the results of its research from June 2011, which indicated that mobile emails are currently the most powerful way to encourage consumers to pursue shopping activities.
As mobile phones rapidly rise in their importance to online commerce, many efforts have been taken to try to market to smartphone users and to understand which methods are most effective among the many techniques that are being newly attempted.
The ExactTarget study discovered that in the United States, 56 percent of smartphone owners had made a purchase as a result of an email message that they received on their mobile device. At the same time, 41 percent of American smartphone owners said that they’d bought something after having received a text message.
That said, while many smartphone owners are shopping in response to marketing they have received through their mobile device, most are not making these purchases through the phone itself. Only 34 percent responded to receiving a mobile message by buying a product or service through the web browser on the phone. Equally, though, only 31 percent had responded by shopping through an app, and 19 percent made a purchase at an app store from the smartphone.
Instead, the majority – 43 percent – made their purchase online on a desktop or laptop computer, or in person (35 percent) at a brick-and-mortar shop.
It is anticipated that businesses in the United States will spend more than $1.1 billion this year on mobile marketing, and that this amount will rise in 2012 to $1.5 billion.
