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Large-screen handsets will revolutionise email marketing

Platform: Mobile | Author: Nick Christie, UK country director, Epsilon International | Source: NMA magazine | Published: 13.11.08

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The gloves are off in the race to out-cool the iPhone. Touchscreen handsets have evolved from being an early-adopter fashion accessory to a mainstream mobile must-have. With all the major brands jumping on the Apple bandwagon, these devices are will become serious tools that deliver incredible benefits for email marketers.

There was a time when I thought the writing was on the wall for the BlackBerry, but the speed at which Research In Motion has rolled out its first touchscreen model, the...

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... Storm, is proof there's life in the brand, which now has its sights set on the consumer market.

I could never have imagined that Apple would revolutionise the email marketing industry. But large, colour touchscreens, 3G and lightning-fast fingertip user interfaces have raised the bar and will accelerate the decline of the text format for on-the-move email. This new breed of devices that support full HTML email, as well as a host of other formats, make it easier to read newsletters and offers. This means better response rates for emails sent to touchscreen phones thanks to the greater visual impact of HTML messages than plain text. Users can also click through to any website (rather than just those supported by traditional handsets) and view, download or interact with rich content.

In Epsilon's most recent Benchmark study, plain-text emails made up just 6% of all emails delivered in the UK, aided by the dominance of the BlackBerry in UK business. But it also shows this percentage is falling. It will diminish further once the Storm gains a hold in the market.

The current BlackBerry user profile is predominantly businesses, so the device attracts more B2B email campaigns. The Apple iPhone, the BlackBerry Storm and the Google Phone will revolutionise the profile of who uses mobile email, opening it up to smaller businesses and consumers. These devices encourage a broader cross-section of consumer brands to target a younger audience and invest in developing much more creative and visual emails.

We've already seen that brands targeting consumers in the retail and gaming markets benefit greatly by displaying their products visually within an email. It's difficult to generate interest in a fashion item, for example, without showing it. The touchscreen revolution couldn't have happened at a better time as there's a fundamental shift in the sort of emails being sent out, with a slant towards longer term CRM messaging. It will also be fascinating to see what Apple fights back with in 2009.