Hello 2011! As all of us here at Century College spend the next four months hustling between classes, balancing our academic and personal lives, and burning the midnight oil, everyone around us will continue to evolve their behavior patterns in ways that will affect our jobs tomorrow. Just this past week some VERY interesting numbers were released from a couple studies that looked closely at how people access email and how quickly people in the United States are downloading and transferring information. Here’s an excerpt from Marketing Vox noting these numbers.
20% of Email Sent by Retailers is Opened on a Mobile Device
One out of every five marketing emails a retailer sends is opened on a mobile device, according to a survey by Knotice, with iPhone users the most avid mobile email readers. 11.99% of email was opened on an iPhone. 3.73% was opened on an iPad, 3.73% on a device using the Android operating system, 0.28% on a device using the Windows Mobile or Windows Phone 7 operating systems, 0.27% on a Palm, and 0.08% on a BlackBerry.
3 in 4 of Connected US Consumers Have High-Speed Web
Three in four connected US consumers already have high-speed internet, and another 5% will definitely or probably buy it, according to new data from the Nielsen Company. Other emerging technology devices with a relatively high rate of ownership among connected consumers include digital video recorders (35%) and handheld multimedia devices (20%).
Just this week in MKTG 2065 (Principles of Social Media Marketing), faculty instructor Teri Otte commented that many businesses are now considering email marketing part of the “traditional” approach to marketing. Judging from the above, some aspect (every aspect?) of email marketing is certainly at the mercy of new media. Does that make email marketing “traditional”? I think there is a strong case to be made on either side.
So, given that more people are accessing email via mobile devices, how might this change the way we marketers should go about conducting email marketing campaigns? I have a few ideas, but I’d like to hear yours. 
Oh, and welcome back everyone! Let’s have a great semester.
3 Responses
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Randy Says:
We are thinking about that here too. We send a Student Life email blast out to all of the students. We need to communicate what is happening at Century. Any suggestions?
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Stephen Kelly Says:
Hi Randy,
One thing folks at the college could do better is aggregating campus wide information, pulling communications from different branches of the college and placing them in a single place. Woody is probably doing the best job of this right now.
An ideal situation (and a novel one at that) would be to have any academic department or branch of the college that shoots out college related information to integrate a Twitter account into their communication strategy. Twitter feeds can be funneled into lists, and lists can be easily embedded just about anywhere in the form of a widget. This would give anyone with some web real estate the potential to embed the widget, and hence, provide automated updates on everything that is happening college wide.
I’m sure there are other ways this could be done as well, but this was the first that came to mind.
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Lynn Smaagaard Says:
I think it would be interesting to ask students how they would like to receive information. The one thing that may want to be avoided is too much clutter – as in too many pieces of information. I really see communication going to an opt in – or just give me what I need approach.
