Mobile is now a top priority for email marketers, and firms want to control to the furthest extent possible how contacts on their email marketing list will interact with emails on a mobile screen.
In a post for iMedia Connection, mobile marketing firm TapSense's Vice President Gregory Kennedy suggested that the combination of email marketing and mobile devices is a proverbial match made in heaven, primarily because of just how powerful both technologies have been proven to be.
Pointing out that 44 percent of emails are read on smart devices and that the number of the world's email accounts is projected to hit 3.8 billion next year, Kennedy recommended that app developers take a lesson from marketers who've embraced mobile and bring the power of email marketing to their promotion strategies.
Trouble in paradise
However, it looks as though a glitch in Apple's latest mobile software update, iOS 7, has become a stumbling block for email marketers trying to optimize for the operating system.
Chad White, principal of marketing research at ExactTarget, recently told Internet Retailer that the new connection between the iPhone email app and iOS calendar is faulty.
According to the news source, White noticed that when he opened up his email app and checked his inbox, dates were now hyperlinked when they appeared in messages' subject lines. Users can tap the linked date and it will bring them to their iOS calendars, which will automatically create an event by pulling the information from the text of the email.
Of course, this could be a great tool for email marketers, allowing sales, promotions and the content of their messages to be seamlessly interwoven with their contacts' schedules.
But the iOS feature might not be the godsend marketers were hoping for. In fact, it seems that this new capability of the smartphone isn't all that smart.
White told Internet Retailer that iOS linked "Saturday 1" in an email with the subject line "Rain or Shine, Saturday 1 Day Sale Is On." Of course, the message was not promoting a sale on Saturday the first, but a one-day sale on Saturday. Furthermore, when White tapped the link, the calendar app created an event on November 1 – a Friday.
Meanwhile, another email White received, which contained the phrase "Oct. 27," did not create a link for what was obviously the date of the sale, the news source reported.
Rather than grow frustrated, perhaps firms can look at the glitch from a more positive angle: Mobile devices are still nowhere near as smart as marketers are.