Last post, we experienced the hard knock of the following statistics:

“45% of consumers have unsubscribed from a brand’s promotional emails because the brand’s emails or website didn’t display or work well on their smartphone.” -Litmus, 2016

“34% of consumers have marked a brand’s promotional emails as spam because they didn’t display or work well on their smartphone.” -Litmus, 2016

Like it or not, fair or not: sending mobile-unfriendly emails is now an unpardonable offense.

If you send emails to your consumers, brace yourself for the following statistic.

“45% of consumers have unsubscribed from a brand’s promotional emails because the brand’s emails or website didn’t display or work well on their smartphone.” -Litmus, 2016

Survived that one? Don’t relax yet - it gets worse.

When it comes to mobile email, you as a publisher have tremendous opportunity - and tremendous competition, as we saw last week.

91% of smartphone users check email on their cell phones at least once a day (and many users spend a lot of their mobile device time on email.

But almost 90% of publishers are involved in email marketing. The competition for your readers’ attention is stiff. How are you going to win?

“It shouldn’t be called a smartphone. It should really be called a “smart-inbox.”
- Dave Hendricks, President of LiveIntent

With a little calculation of the time you spend on your smartphone, you can probably see where he’s coming from. How much time do you spend per day on your smartphone making phone calls? Okay, now how much time do you spend on your smartphone checking your email? Hmmm…. If you’re like 91% of smartphone users, you check email at least once a day - and probably more.

The world has gone mobile-crazy. (And with the advent of Pokemon Go, the craziness is clearly visible.)

Publishers want to catch them too.

No, not Pokemon. Mobile users. And the weapon of choice has been mobile apps.

How hard could it be? Develop an app, get your readers to download it, and you’ll be enshrined on their homescreens, beckoning them tantalizingly to open and read. Captive audience, anyone?

Except, unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Many good publishers have gone that route, and eventually withdrew their mobile apps.

How about you? Should YOUR publishing company build a mobile app? If you can answer yes to the following 5 questions, you may have a shot at success. If not - better to invest the resources in your mobile website.