How mobile improved engagement at New Look

With a handful of big retail names now devoting more time and energy to mobile, details of its benefits are starting to filter through and New Look is one early adopter whose trials have suggested that using the channel improves customer engagement.

It found that customers who received an email on their mobile were three times as likely to open it as those who received one on their PC – as long as the email had been redesigned to suit the mobile. To work on a mobile an email needs bigger text, buttons that are easy to press on a touch screen and easily visible content.

The other caveat is that you need to have some indication that a particular customer uses email, rather than sending them the mobile version unsolicited. If a shopper browses on the mobile site, or has said they use mobile, they should receive the mobile email.

For New Look, three times as many people opened mobile emails as desktop emails during a three day trial in April, although they’ve released no information on how many sales the mobile channel produced.

But Responsys, the supplier working with the retailer, says sales will generally be proportionally higher. If 30% of recipients open the mobile email and 10% open the desktop email, 3% of mobile users will buy something compared to 1% of PC users.

Jon Stanesby, associate director of strategic consulting at Responsys, says mobile users are also more likely to open an email more than once. So they’ll look at it on the bus on the way home, for instance, and then again on the PC when they get home and want to buy or have a closer look.

“There’s nothing to suggest mobile users are more likely to convert,” he says. “People using mobile tend to buy more, but only proportionally to the increase in engagement.”

But whether or not conversion rates increase, the figures are still good news for retailers. Customers are bombarded with information – anything that can help you stand out and grab their attention is a benefit.