A report published by Experian CheetahMail reveals that while a quarter of people now access emails via their mobile phone, poor formatting and a lack of brand recognition means that almost a third of permission-based marketing emails are being deleted unread.
The report, Email marketing: the mobile conundrum, is based on research commissioned by  Experian CheetahMail and carried out by YouGov, that looks at consumers attitudes towards reading emails on their mobile phone. YouGov surveyed 2,255 adults online, between 28 August  and 1 September 2009.  
The report reveals that mobile email usage is rife among 18-34 year olds, with around three out of four saying that they either currently read emails on their mobile phone, or plan to do so in the near future. A third of all respondents said that a major barrier to reading emails on their mobile was poor email layout, while a further 30% said that they would not open an email from a brand they did not recognise.  
The report also found that the growing trend of reading emails on the move challenges the traditional thinking around the best time for brands to engage with customers. While nearly half of the respondents read emails on their phone throughout the day, over half read emails on their phone over the weekend, which is traditionally seen as a bad time to send out marketing emails.  In an era where the mobile phone is now routinely used to check and respond to emails, it is clear that email marketers cannot afford to ignore the mobile channel, says Experian CheetahMail EMEA Managing Director, Steve Lomax. However, our research shows that only well formatted emails from recognised brands are likely to generate marketing cut-through. Brands also need to take into account that consumers have a very different user experience on their mobile, and what looks good on a PC can be almost unreadable on a mobile device.
For effective permission-based mobile marketing campaigns, best practice techniques such as segmenting messages according to immediacy, optimising subject lines, sending multi-part emails and linking to a mobile version of the email can lead to an uplift in campaign results.
The report is available for free download here.