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The other day, Laura at Word to the Wise got me thinking with her post, 'Email is different'. To loosely recap, the post answered a question which likely echoed the sentiments of many towards issues like anti-spam legislation and permission, being:

'Why do so many feel that email should be somehow held to a higher standard than other direct marketing channels?'

In comparing TV and radio segments to email, Laura made some clear distinctions - the former two have been marketing channels from the beginning. They're broadcast mediums. They've been created by marketers, are wholly paid for by owned by marketers and therefore marketers are entitled to pester each and all who choose to tune in with marketing messages.

Email is different because it's not solely a marketing channel. The cost of spam isn't borne simply by the sender, but by hosts, ISPs, recipients and everyone in-between.

Nonetheless, it must seem strange to those with limited email experience that it's not okay to purchase an email list, while the practice of buying and selling personal information remains widespread amongst telemarketers and direct mailers. Why should email be put on a pedestal? After all, consumers don't pay phone line rental in order to receive unsolicited calls at dinnertime... But they still happen, without consequence to the call center, or their clients.

I'm sure a lot of designers, perhaps you included, have had conversations along these lines. Personally, I think senders of unsolicited email should be held accountable because they cost ISPs and ESPs a supreme amount of development time - all those super-intelligent engineers working on spam detection and filtering tools could really be off making the world a better place in other ways. Senders can create worldwide, widespread inconvenience, with very little time and effort. They should also be held accountable because it's technically possible to do so.

However, this is a can of worms I wanted to share with you. When your clients ask why they can't purchase lists and send unsolicited email, what do you say? We're looking forward to your opinions in the comments below.

Use of mobile email clients is set to surpass desktop and webmail client usage by July, according to the results of a recent study by our friends at Return Path. After examining data from over 90 email clients, amounting for more than 130 million data points over a 6 month period, Return Path found that while webmail clients overall are on a slow decline, mobile views increased by 82.4% over the same period (March '11 – March '12). Mobile devices currently claim 16% of overall email client market share, with 85% of mobile email opens occurring on an Apple iOS device. This is comparable to our earlier findings.

Return Path also found that there is an uptick in mobile email readership during the weekend, which can be attributed to email recipients switching from the desktop to a smartphone outside of office hours. Conversely, it's at its lowest on a Wednesday, when presumably folks are at their most busy tackling their Outlook, or OSX Mail inboxes.

The implications for email senders like you and I are fairly clear. As Tom at Return Path states in his summary:

"... those that aren’t tracking which device their subscribers are reading their emails on, or optimizing their emails or websites for mobile devices stand to lose out.  A poor user experience could mean no response, no action, or plainly put, no ROI."

If you aren't already optimizing your emails for mobile, now is the time. To set you on the right path, we've got a practical primer on email design, not to mention a neat template builder which can whip together mobile-ready campaigns in a matter of minutes.

Out of curiosity, will Return Path's findings change the way you send campaigns? Let us know in the comments below.

Customer feedback shapes much of what Campaign Monitor is today, not to mention what it will become in the future. So we thought we'd reach out and see what one thing Campaign Monitor customers like you would like to see improved about our service.

In return, we've got a modest mountain of ultra-exclusive Campaign Monitor t-shirts to give away, one per customer. Apologies in advance if we run out of your size - you'll see what's available after submitting your feedback. If we've run out of shirts and closed the giveaway, don't worry - we'll have new swag and more giveaways in the coming months, so watch this space.

Thank you so much for helping us improve - we'll be in touch if we make good on your suggestion. Now get some of that t-shirt action!