Opening Number and Mobile E-mail

74 percent.

According to a study by TNS, as reported by eMarketer yesterday, 74 percent of the world's digital messages are sent from a mobile phone. E-mail, text. You name it. That's pretty impressive to think about, and be sure to look at the growth in the last year:


Here's my one subpoint on this, and it kind of goes off a tweet last night from Steve Rubel. Steve's question was whether or not it matters to e-mail users if they get a plain text e-mail, as opposed to a formatted, HTML one.

I want to add mobile e-mail into this equation, because, given the statistic above, it's clear that it's a main source for many of us (the same study confirmed this, as it said 69 % of Americans who use mobile e-mail use it daily). In some ways, a plain text/HTML e-mail won't matter if you know your contact is reading it on the go. It generally will come up the same (except any pictures).

But, what about sending e-mails from a mobile device? Where's the etiquette there? Those e-mails automatically go plain text and, more often than not, you add a signature to indicate it is sent from a mobile device. It's sometimes painfully obvious that a note is coming from someone on the fly.

Where's the line between convenience and business courtesy? At one point do you owe it to your contact to wait to get to a computer? Or have we gotten to the transition where getting messages back, regardless, are important?

I definitely don't have the answer to these questions - as long as I've been in the business world, peers, managers and colleagues have all been ingrained in mobile e-mail. But I'm definitely interested in everyone's thoughts.