Nowa­days, many con­sumers receive and read their emails on mobile devices. The chal­lenge is for brands and busi­ness to opti­mize their email mar­ket­ing cam­paigns so as to main­tain a strong con­ver­sion rate for email mar­ket­ing cam­paigns.

A new report from Yesmail has revealed some fas­ci­nat­ing insights about mobile con­ver­sion rates. One of the key find­ings was that while the num­ber of pur­chas­es made as a result of emails opened on a mobile device has grown almost 40 per­cent over the past year, rev­enues from mobile have not kept pace. The study ana­lyzed data span­ning from Q2 2013 to Q2 2014.

The rea­son rev­enues do not match the rise in opened mes­sages is due to the aver­age order val­ue (AOV) for mobile devices declin­ing 30 per­cent since last year – from $79 to $55 – mean­ing the val­ue is now 33 per­cent low­er than desk­tops. In the same peri­od AOVs for desk­top pur­chas­es has dropped only slight­ly, from $88 to $83.

“Con­vert­ing con­sumers along the mobile path to pur­chase is one of the great­est chal­lenges for mar­keters,” said Michael Fish­er, pres­i­dent of Yes Life­cy­cle Mar­ket­ing. “Head­ing into the hol­i­day sea­son, brands have to make it eas­i­er for con­sumers to make pur­chas­es while on-the-go, as well as trust those mobile expe­ri­ences enough to repeat them.”

Declining Mobile Conversion Rates

The chal­lenge with mobile con­ver­sions orig­i­nates from con­sumers reluc­tance to click on brand emails on their mobiles, accord­ing to Yesmail’s report. Brands have been send­ing 9 per­cent more emails in 2014 than they did in 2013, and sub­scribers’ inbox­es are becom­ing more clut­tered. As a result, the email open rate has decreased by 3 per­cent and unique clicks have dropped by 14 per­cent over the last year.

In addi­tion, con­sumers are 50 per­cent less like­ly to click links in a mar­ket­ing email on their mobile, than one on their desk­top, which results in an over­all low­er con­ver­sion rate on mobile – 1.8 per­cent vs. 2.7 per­cent for desk­top.

You can down­load the full Yesmail Email Mar­ket­ing Com­pass report here.

This arti­cle first appeared on the Linkdex blog.

How is your busi­ness opti­miz­ing email mar­ket­ing cam­paigns for mobile? Dis­cuss in the com­ments below!