Americans may be spending more time online using social networks, but business to business email marketing has taken to another venue – mobile phones.
A new study, “What Americans Do Online,” from the Nielsen Co. – famous for rating television and radio programs – has shown that during June 2010, social networking took up 22.7 percent of Internet time. This represents a 7 percent increase over the same month in 2009. Playing online games, watching videos and movies also rose.
While email’s share of Internet time dropped about 3 percentage points, from 11.5 percent in June 2009 to 8.3 percent in June 2010, business to business email marketing appears to have migrated to a new venue, mobile phones. Mobile phone users told Nielsen they spend nearly 42 percent of their time reading their email, up from 37 percent 12 months ago.
This data suggests that businesses that want to market via email need to adapt their messages to the new context of mobile phones, say industry experts. While longer and more graphics-heavy emails can be transmitted effectively via the Internet, effective email messages on mobile phones require a different mindset. Even the largest smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone and some of the models that now carry Google’s Android don’t provide enough screen space for lengthy email message, even when those emails follow good principles of transactional communication.
Consequently, business to business email marketing needs to adapt its messages to the short, quick environment of mobile phone usage, the latest survey seems to indicate.