• by Ben Frederick  @mp_benfred, December 31, 2015

Smartphones proved to be a valuable source of revenue for email marketers in 2015. Smartphones drove 56.6% of all mobile email marketing revenue, which was up 9.9% overall year-over-year (YoY) in Q3.

According to a study from Yesmail using data from their clients, 50% of emails in Q3 were opened only on mobile devices, tablets included—a 6% YoY increase from last year. 42% of emails were only opened on a desktop and 6% were opened on both desktop and mobile.

Mobile click-to-open (CTO) increased by 13.4% YoY, closing the gap with desktop CTO, which was down in Q3 by 17.2% compared to the same time last year. Email marketing revenue is measured as revenue generated from consumers that buy products immediately after click links within emails. The decrease in desktop CTO has lead to a decrease in desktop email revenue growth.

According to some sources, on Black Friday mobile email click-throughs grew 22.8% over last year.

Email is known to be a dependable and increasingly dominant revenue generator for marketers, which has lead to some large acquisitions in the last year: Constant Contact, an email marketing company announced that Endurance International would buy them for $1.1 billion (though a lawsuit from investors, announced Tuesday, alleges the company was sold too cheaply).

On mobile, email apps dominate users’ top five most used apps, which is a difficult group for developers to break into, considering competition like Facebook and over-the-top messenger apps

As mCommerce continues to develop into a more user-friendly experience, mobile email marketing can expect to grow in the foreseeable future.