• by Jess Nelson , February 11, 2016

Apple shipped an estimated 12 million Apple Watches in 2015, according to the latest forecasts from Canalys. 

The marketing analytics firm estimates that 5 million Apple Watches were sold during the holiday season alone in the fourth quarter of 2015. Canalys expressed in a press release that Apple leads the smartwatch market by as much as two-thirds.  

Apple has not confirmed the exact number of units sold since the Apple Watch was released nine months ago, and folded watch sales into the “other products” category in its Q1 2016 earning report, along with the iPod and Beats headphones. Macs, iPads and iPhones were still broken out separately in the report, with specific unit numbers and sales generated.

Although the exact number of Apple Watches sold is unclear, the fact that men and women are receiving emails from marketers on their wrists is not.

Lauren Smith, content marketing manager at email testing company Litmus, says the Apple Watch was one of the most exciting technologies to debut in 2015.

Smith spearheaded Litmus’ vast anthology -- State of Email Report -- which reviews 2015 technology innovations and updates that have altered traditional email marketing.

“Mobile and email definitely go hand in hand,” says Smith. “And wearables are just another component of that.”

Sending emails to an Apple Watch, however, juxtaposes with the traditional deliverability of marketing messages to mobile and desktop devices. No videos, images, colors and no branding will display on an Apple Watch.

“The Apple Watch doesn’t display HTML emails, it displays the plain text version,” says Smith. “There is a rich text version that can be sent, but not a lot of ESPs support it.”

Smith recommends that flummoxed email marketers try PutsMail’s free tool for optimizing emails for the Apple Watch. PutsMail is a Litmus company that allows marketers to test their HTML emails before sending them.