• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, September 12, 2018

Now is the time to grab and share two new Mobile Marketing Trends reports. Here’s a sample of data-backed email takeaways: In Not Your Grandma’s Email: The Transformation of Email in a Mobile World, the report reveals how to put email at the core of your multichannel campaigns, driving engagement and revenue. 

• Mobile engagement increases 3x when you send both email and push
• Dormant users are 50% more likely to re-engage as a result of email
• Loyal users love frequent emails, but emailing less engaged users too often leads to unsubscribes

Using email as a stand-alone channel is old school, says the report. Today, you can’t afford to miss the opportunity to use email to drive mobile engagement and revenue. In the first quarter of 2018 alone, the app economy was responsible for $18.4 billion. Email marketing enables brands to tap into this revenue by prompting mobile users to come back to the app, where brands have a chance to monetize. But email alone isn’t enough, says the report. 

To truly engage customers wherever they are, you need a mobile marketing strategy that combines email with other communication channels. This is a comprehensive guide that uses data to inform you how to grow email as a core part of your multichannel campaigns, so you can engage customers and drive mobile revenue. You need an email marketing strategy that is not siloed from the masses on mobile. 

The report analyzed an aggregate of global data over a 60-day period, from apps that sent at least 1,000 emails per day. To eliminate bias, the report includes apps from a variety of verticals and with varying counts of daily active users. This means that apps were both big and small, and included, but were not limited to, travel, gaming, education, entertainment, and fintech. 

The report also suggests:

• The need to connect with users on more than one communication channel. App re-engagement increases 3x when you send both emails and push notifications 
• Increasing email frequency does not directly lead to increased unsubscribes. It can be trickier than that
• Including dormant users in your email segmentation mix may convince half of them to come back to the app once more per week, on average. 

The primary goal of emails isn’t just getting users to open them. it’s great if people read your emails, but what you really want is for them to re-engage with your app. The data shows that users who open emails have 40% more weekly sessions versus those who don’t. 

Best Practices for “Email +” includes staying top of mind and reaching your users where they prefer to connect is an essential multichannel messaging strategy for customer engagement. To coordinate email marketing with other channels, like push notifications, web push, in-app messages, and App Inbox, some of hundreds of resources with best practice guidelines are: 

• The Most Powerful Words for Push Notifications 
• Everything You Need to Know About Rich Push Notifications 
• 4 Simple Steps for Better Web Push Notifications

It turns out, on average, 35% of users who receive marketing emails are dormant. Marketers are already taking steps to re-engage their users by messaging them with new content or deals to lure them back into the app. The average open rate for apps that send one email a week is 13.4%. When apps start sending two emails a week, that number plummets dramatically to 1.67%. But then something really interesting happens, says the report. For every additional email apps send, the average open rate increases. 

Concluding

• A multichannel approach is a must. Weekly app sessions increase 3x when you send both emails and push notifications. 
• Emailing dormant users once per week may convince half of them to open your app once more. 
• You should email loyal users more frequently, but don’t give less engaged users the same treatment — they may unsubscribe.