by Jess Nelson, November 23, 2016
With Black Friday lurking just around the corner, have you tested your emails to make sure they render correctly on mobile devices?
Nearly six in 10 Americans — 137.4 million individuals — are considering shopping this Thanksgiving weekend, according to the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual holiday consumer survey. This factors both in-store and online purchases, but online shopping has been steadily outpacing brick-and-mortar storefronts over the past few years.
An October report from Deloitte warned that retail brands will likely see decreasing foot traffic this holiday season. Deloitte expects in-store traffic at large retail brands to decrease from 63% to 59% this year, and shopping mall traffic to decrease from 53% to 50%. Independent stores, located outside of shopping malls, will also see their traffic decrease from 42% to 38% during the 2016 holiday season.
Online shopping, on the other hand, is predicted to jump 18%, according to a study released Tuesday by Visa, compared to a 16% increase in 2015. Forty-seven percent of Americans plan to shop online this holiday season, according to the report, compared to 46% in 2015 and 43% in 2014.
Thirty-three percent of respondents in Visa’s study asserted that they anticipated buying gifts this holiday season from a phone or tablet.
This should not be surprising, considering that the retail industry has the highest mobile open rate, according to Movable Ink’s latest consumer device preference report. Seventy-three percent of all total retail email opens occurred on a mobile device, according to the study, with 60% of opens from a smartphone and 14% from a tablet.
Email is a strong motivator for online and in-store shopping, and email-driven revenue on Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2015 more than doubled, according to data from Yesmail. Email-driven Cyber Monday purchases jumped 129% that year, while Black Friday purchases jumped 162%.
Mobile rendering is critical during this holiday season for email marketing, and a lack of mobile optimization will only contribute to declining holiday ROI.
MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily
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