• by Jess Nelson , March 3, 2016

Brands that embrace responsive mobile design have significantly higher email engagement rates, according to new research released Thursday by Yesmail. 

The way a consumer interacts with an email marketing message is largely influenced by the email’s design, according to a study of over a billion emails sent by the email marketing services platform during fourth-quarter 2015.

Emails that are optimized to be read on a mobile device see, on average, a 24% increase in email clicks when compared to emails without a mobile design. Furthermore, brands with responsive email designs see increases of mobile click-to-open rates by 55% and desktop click-to-open rates by 23%.   

Mobile also accounted for a quarter of all email-driven revenue during the busy holiday shopping period, according to Yesmail’s study. Although desktop still brings in larger purchase numbers, mobile order values are growing at a faster rate when compared to their desktop peers.

Online desktop purchases grew by 13% in the fourth quarter of 2015 year-over-year, while mobile purchases increased by 15%.

The critical impact of mobile design to email marketing ROI shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Mobile is now a major shareholder in email marketing, and 69% of all email opens in 2015 were on a mobile device, according to a recent study by email marketing company Movable Ink. Less than a third of emails were opened on a desktop, according to the report, and only 16% of emails were opened by tablet.

“You obviously have to do mobile in a mobile-first world,” says Loretta Jones, vice president of marketing at Insightly, a customer relationship and project management solution for small businesses.

Yet, only 17% of marketers use responsive design in every single email sent according to Yesmail’s study. That’s a potential critical loss of customers and brand awareness considering 75% of Americans will simply delete emails if they aren’t optimized for mobile, per a Brafton study.

“No matter what device you’re looking at email on, it's still a personal communication,” says Jones. “Whether it’s a personal letter or junk mail -- it's still all about the content of the email. That’s the mechanics of the medium.”