Retail email misses the mark when not optimized for mobile apps and web

internetretailer.com

Email should route traffic to the consumer’s preferred destination, whether it’s the retailer’s mobile website or mobile app, or to an app store to download the retailer’s app.

As today’s consumer journey continues to change dramatically, email marketing has remained steadfastly important for retailers. According to the Q1 2016 Email Marketing Benchmark Report from Experian Marketing Services, email volume rose by 25.9% while open rates matched or were above those in Q1 2015.
The same report, however, showed that email conversion rates for multichannel retailers are under stress. Unique click rates declined in Q1, 2016 year over year from 2.4 percent to 2.1 percent while the average transaction rate dropped slightly from 0.06 to 0.05 percent.
At the same time, consumers are spending more time in their favorite mobile apps. About half of the Internet Retailer Top 500 has an app for iOS or Android. App shoppers engage more and spend more compared to mobile website shoppers; therefore, converting mobile website shoppers into app shoppers is a key objective for many retailers. Amazon is leading the industry and proving that a well-designed mobile app will drive loyalty and engagement.
Despite this fact, the links in most retail emails are sending traffic to mobile websites without consideration for the retailer’s app. Push notifications and in-app messages target retail app shoppers but these efforts have very high opt-out rates and are independent of a retailer’s broader email strategy.
When links in retail emails ignore current and potential app users, an opportunity is lost for app engagement, app installs and ultimately sales. At any mobile moment, retailers should route traffic to the consumer’s preferred destination whether it’s the retailer’s mobile website, mobile app for iOS or Android or the app store to install the app. The technology that enables email marketers to do this type of unified routing from one link is called deep linking.
The phrase “deep linking” historically means linking to a website beyond the home page. Now the phrase also means linking from a web browser (i.e. email) to a mobile app. Deep-linking solutions can use an app’s URL schemes to open a particular page in the app. A URL scheme is simply a prefix for triggering the app to open or for letting the app use a feature on the device, such as the camera.  For example, the URL scheme for opening the home page of the Amazon Shopping App is com.amazon.mobile.shopping.web:// and there are others for opening category and product-level pages. Deep linking with URL schemes can effectively route traffic to both websites, apps and app stores all from the same email campaign links.

So why haven’t most retailers with mobile apps adopted this deep-linking capability for their email campaigns? Part of the reason is very entrenched marketing silos that are still present in many organizations. The email marketing manager is not tasked with driving mobile app engagement or revenue. On the other hand, the mobile app manager may not be thinking about traditional email marketing as a source of app engagement and downloads.
Another reason for the delay in adoption is that deep linking is not a feature that has yet been offered in traditional email platforms. That may change as these platforms consider a cloud-based approach to deep linking that is aligned with their pricing and services approach. Meanwhile, most deep-linking solutions have targeted single app developers and require technical resources to implement software development kits or SDKs that are then maintained over time. Such solutions are too technical for most marketers who need simple, easy-to-use tools that let them nimbly test email links and campaigns that can also route traffic to mobile websites and apps.
Email marketers looking to get an edge on the competition this holiday season still have time to implement deep linking. They key is to choose a solution that has no base-level technical implementation or SDK and one that can be tested easily and then scaled immediately when proven to increase engagement and conversion.
In addition, current analytics investments must be supported via UTM parameters. A UTM parameter is a tag added to the end of a URL which sends attribution data back to your web or channel analytics package (Google Analytics, Adobe Omniture etc.). Here’s an example of what UTM parameters look like at the end of a URL.
www.sitename.com/?utm_source=octoberpromo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fall2016
Deep linking combined with UTM support allows marketers to track which email links are driving mobile app engagement vs. mobile website engagement.
For multichannel retailers, apps and websites are both here to stay for the foreseeable future. Email marketing with deep-linking capabilities will help pave the way for a smoother path to purchase and a more engaged consumer.