Source: Marketing Land
Think for a minute, if you will, about your email reading habits. If you are like most busy people today, your first exposure to your email inbox is often on your mobile device. So it is easy to say, "well duh," to the recent reports that show over 1/3 of all emails are read first on a mobile device.
It is important, however, to reflect on just how quickly that has changed. Email on mobile has tripled in less than 18 months. There is much more to this than people simply reading email on a smaller screen.
The team at Virtual Race Bags closely monitors the performance of all of our digital goody bags, and here is what we have observed about how mobile is impacting both email and web visits.
The Daily Delete
In the distant past (2010), people would begin their workday in front of their computer reviewing email and prioritizing their day. This behavior led businesses to the practice of sending important email communication early in the morning (before 8am) so that the email was waiting in a person's inbox.
Mobile has changed that practice completely. It is now more likely that people are reviewing their inbox on their mobile device as they get kids ready for school, drink their coffee or (gasp) drive to work! The goal is now not reading the email, but filtering and prioritizing the inbox for later review. Hence the "daily delete" of non-critical messages.
How have email marketers responded? Amazingly, many haven't. They continue to queue up their messages to go out at 6am, only to be caught in the morning inbox storm.
Our goal is to get as many of your participants as possible into your Virtual Race Bag, so we are constantly experimenting to determine the optimum window (spoiler alert, there isn't one) as well as simplifying the message to drive action (see next topic).
Image-Less Emails
There once was a time when emails were nothing but text. No pictures. Boring. Then desktop email clients got more advanced and emails came alive with all kinds of graphics, images and colors. With mobile, we are finding that it is common for people to choose to never load images, relying instead on the text content to decide what to do next. With this in mind, we have gone "back to the future" to provide your participants a clean, mobile friendly invitation email that makes it easy to access your digital goody bag.
Time
While people are spending more and more time during the day on their mobile device, that does not mean they are spending more time on any one site. With a billion apps, emails, texts, posts, notifications and other flashing lights and noises clamoring for attention, mobile users are scattered!
What does this mean for you? Keep it S-I-M-P-L-E. At Virtual Race Bags, we are in the process of rolling out a series of refinements to eliminate steps necessary for participants to view and claim an offer. We are also simplifying the ability to save an offer to be reviewed later. We call this the "triple play," optimizing the digital experience to align time, place and intent in order to drive results for your sponsors.
There Is One Constant … Change
Providing endurance events the best virtual goody bag on the planet is our mission. We have created hundreds of bags and analyzed the interactions from nearly 2 million participants. Technology and the behavior of its users is changing daily, so we continually seek the best way to incorporate all of the latest tools and services into your Virtual Race Bag, so that you, in turn, can deliver a stellar experience for your participants and results for your sponsors.
If you don't already have a Virtual Race Bag for your event … what are you waiting for! It is incredibly affordable, easy to use, and takes very little time to execute.
Get Started today or Contact Us to learn more.