New 3D Touch features means you will have to perfect your email previews to maintain clickthrough rate
The Apple geeks were out in force last week for the launch of the iPhone 6s, the latest in its series of market-leading smartphones, which have revolutionised the way we access and consume content. Some of us here at Smart Insights got one on the day, but we must thank Philip Storey for alerting us to the fact that 3D Touch or 'Force touch' would affect how emails are viewed.
The latest iteration of the iPhone has a new feature, which will have major implications for email marketers because of its 3D Touch feature and Email 'Peek and Pop'. Apple explains:
"3D Touch helps you get through the email in your inbox more quickly and efficiently. To Peek at a message, just press it lightly.
The content of the email appears on top of your inbox. If it’s a short message and a Peek is all you need, simply stop pressing and you’re back in your inbox.
If you want more than a Peek, press a little more deeply to Pop into the message for a full view — just as if you’d tapped to open it from your inbox".
Mobile opens are increasingly important for mobile marketers. At the start of this year Adestra reported 45% of email opens occurred on mobile, whilst according to Experian 53% of email opens occurred on mobile devices. Moveable Ink found in the US mobile email open rates were even higher, at 66% of all email opens. So whilst the results may vary between studies and countries it is clear that roughly half of emails are being opened on mobile devices and this rate will in all likelihood increase considerably in coming years, as mobile devices become even more ubiquitous.
Apple devices make up a huge part of this trend towards mobile. The report from MoveableInk found that a massive 58% of email opens were on apple mobile devices. In fact, more emails were opened on apple’s iPhone’s (43%) than on desktop PCs (33%) and Android phones (%7%) put together. So it is clear that any change in the way that iPhones display emails will have a big impact on email marketers.
Use the force
A new feature of the new iPhone 6S when using iOS 9 is 3D Touch or ‘force touch’. This allows the screen to recognise different levels of force being applied by the users finger and use that to differentiate inputs. It has been described as ‘right click for Smart Phones’.
What it means for email
Force touch allows users to preview emails without fully opening the email. A light press will preview an email, whilst applying slightly more force will open up the email fully. This will make it faster to sort through your emails, as you can preview with a light touch and archive by swiping, and only press harder when an email catches your attention enough to make you want to open it. Good news for users, but possibly bad news for email marketers?
It means it will be far easier for users to archive emails from what they see in the preview and won’t need to open them up first. This could potentially reduce open rates considerably.
However because of the new iPhone's large screen the preview is not without its opportunities. It does not have to be a bad thing for email marketers, but it does mean they will have to put more time into optimising the very first part of their email to catch readers attention and spur them into pressing down that little bit harder to open the full mail.
The return of the fold?
Email marketers need to preview their emails to see how they will work on the new iPhones, and optimise the preview area so as to draw readers in.
This is how our email appears in preview mode. As you can see, it could be working a lot harder to draw in readers in the limited space available! Consider changing email formats so that important calls to action are appearing within the preview area, and possibly reduce the size of the branded heading on your emails in order to make room for more useful content in the preview box. This approach is known as a pre-header - which we do use on some of our other emails - for ideas see this post by Mark Brownlow on 4 ways for using Email pre-headers.
Email marketers attempting to optimise their emails for opening on the new iPhones are treading into uncharted territory so testing should be priority number 1, to find out what works and what doesn’t.
If force touch does indeed turn out to be ‘right click’ for smart phones, then it will quickly become standard across the industry. It is certainly a useful way to add a new level of data input to the touch screen, so I would predict we will see it become a standard feature within several years. Whether other mobile operating systems such as android will introduce email previews via force touch as well remains to be seen, but given apple’s fairly dominant position in the Smartphone market and the fact that so many emails are opened on apple mobile devices, it certainly will be an important trend that email marketers need to plan for.
So get thinking about how to tempt opens from the limited space available in the preview box!
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