Why email is still the 'killer app'

In the marketing space all we seem to hear about is social media. And social media is great - for spreading the word, spreading awareness, getting engagement, sharing information.

But when it comes to conversions, email is still the killer app.

I experience it time and again when marketing for clients. So I wasn't surprised when I came across this research recently, that showed the conversion rate for email marketing was three times that of social media.

There are other reasons I still heart email as a marketing tool:


- YOU own the list
- It goes to an inbox (and stays there till deleted)
- You can be much more flexible with content
- You can segment your list
- You can do do some fancy (but easy) automation these days– like RSS to email so that updating your blog sends an email too.
- It's cheap (dear to a zero budget marketing heart)

What I was a little surprised about was how many emails are now read on mobile devices -


Nearly 38% of all email opens occurring in mobile devices.

In the last year, emails opened on mobile devices more than doubled, and have increased 80% in the last six months alone. And they are only being opened once, not scanned on the phone/tablet and answered later on a computer.

This has big implications for you email design and testing.

For me it meant that you should stick to one column design, have multiple calls to actions that are easy to spot on a small screen, send tests to your phone too, keep images down to a minimum...and make sure the links are going to your mobile friendly site.

Do you see any other implications?