How Americans Use Their Smartphone

Smartphone usage in America has gone up dramatically in recent years. In fact, two thirds (64%) of Americans now have smartphones. Shockingly, that number has gone up from just 35% in 2011. Of that 64%, 15% ?have limited options for online access? (other than their cell phones), 7% ?have limited options for online access and no broadband at home,? and 10% ?have no broadband service at home? (other than their data plan). This info comes from a new study by the folks at the Pew Research Center, who 1) took a look at Smartphone ownership, 2) Smartphone usage and attitude, and 3) A ?week in the life of smartphone users.?  They conducted their survey from November 10th 2014 through the 16th, and had a total of 1635 survey respondents. While Pew has some really awesome research regarding #1 and #2, we’re going to focus on #3 – a week in the life of a smartphone user, as it’s the most relevant to our blog topic: email!

As we’ve said before (and will continue to say), email is important: SO important that it was recently voted the most important tool in the workplace. But even outside of the workplace, 44.6 of people have admitted to checking email during their personal time. That’s a number that’s sure to rise over the next couple years, as more people adopt smartphones higher digital marketing budgets allow more funds to be allocated to email marketing. That said, Pew’s research proved once again that email marketing is not dead. Of the 1635 survey respondents, it was found that 88% of them used their smartphone to check their email at least once. The few categories that beat email, were text messaging, voice and video calls, and general internet use.

What’s all of this mean? ? It means that optimization across all devices becomes ever more important for email marketers, and if your emails are not optimized for smartphones, you’re probably losing a large chunk of business. 88% of all age ranges checked their email from their smartphone during the 6 day study, and it seems that that number is only going to increase as more of the US becomes reliant on them (and usage increases).