More and more funds are looking to see should they invest in providing a better tablet experience for investors and prospects viewing their marketing material and related communications. In 2011, nearly 5% of all Internet traffic from global markets came from non-computer mobile devices. Mobile phones are responsible for two-thirds of that traffic, but the remainder is attributed to tablets. While mobile may still be in the lead, tablets are gaining notable steam. This is information that we have tracked in ProFundCom using our technology for hedge fund marketing and from Litmus.
It’s safe not to worry too much about mobile devices for the time being, as most emails relating to fact sheets and performance are still being accessed by desktops. However, new data suggests that people using email to communicate with the financial community need to start thinking seriously about mobile devices. The mobile usage statistics are, as mentioned, relatively low right now but the trend is clear: based on data from some 25,295,000 mails sent to financial community addresses, the number of those mails opened on mobile devices has risen from 9.2% in 2011 to 13.9% in 2012. Among mobile devices the most notable rise was with iPad (up from 38.2% to 42.4%). iPhone usage actually fell (from 57.3% to 53.6%) with Android showing a small rise (from 2.24% to 2.6%). There were predictable, if small, drops in Blackberry and Nokia S60 devices. Interestingly, some campaigns recorded no Blackberry utilisation whatsoever. Despite the claims made for the BYOD (bring your own device) trend in workplaces these figures underline the essential technological conservatism of the financial sector. The vast majority of people are still looking at email on desktop computers. However, there are clear signs of change. There’s a lot going on in the wider marketplace, particularly with the surge of interest in seven-inch tablets from Google and Amazon. There’s also the continuing popularity of the iPad, as well as the trend to larger screens on smartphones, so we can safely predict that by this time next year the figures are going to look very different. The diversity of devices will also influence how we respond to email. Business to investor email communication increased by 17% last year. It’s become a crucial channel for analysts and others to put their insights in front of committed and potential customers. But if more and more people are checking emails on smaller screens, not only do marketers need to ensure their carefully crafted messages are not being destroyed by the smaller form, they need to know who is using what and adapt their mailings accordingly. Michelle Ward, Head of Marketing at Pictet says that: “The direction that we are heading towards is to provide as little information as possible in all our email communications but give our contacts the ability to launch into a media form that fits the device that they are viewing the email on. Whilst this may not be seen as the traditional way on how design agencies like to create emails, using ProFundCom to do a year’s worth of split testing has shown that our readership improves over 70% when we give contacts the option of how to consume the information.” So, the message is to think ahead – we all have to take into account the rise of the mobile device and adapt accordingly.
