• by Jess Nelson , November 23, 2016

With Black Friday lurking just around the corner, have you tested your emails to make sure they render correctly on mobile devices?

Nearly six in 10 Americans -- 137.4 million individuals -- are considering shopping this Thanksgiving weekend, according to the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual holiday consumer survey. This factors both in-store and online purchases, but online shopping has been steadily outpacing brick-and-mortar storefronts over the past few years.

An October report from Deloitte warned that retail brands will likely see decreasing foot traffic this holiday season. Deloitte expects in-store traffic at large retail brands to decrease from 63% to 59% this year, and shopping mall traffic to decrease from 53% to 50%. Independent stores, located outside of shopping malls, will also see their traffic decrease from 42% to 38% during the 2016 holiday season. 

Online shopping, on the other hand, is predicted to jump 18%, according to a study released Tuesday by Visa, compared to a 16% increase in 2015. Forty-seven percent of Americans plan to shop online this holiday season, according to the report, compared to 46% in 2015 and 43% in 2014. 

Thirty-three percent of respondents in Visa’s study asserted that they anticipated buying gifts this holiday season from a phone or tablet. 

This should not be surprising, considering that the retail industry has the highest mobile open rate, according to Movable Ink’s latest consumer device preference report. Seventy-three percent of all total retail email opens occurred on a mobile device, according to the study, with 60% of opens from a smartphone and 14% from a tablet.

Email is a strong motivator for online and in-store shopping, and email-driven revenue on Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2015 more than doubled, according to data from Yesmail. Email-driven Cyber Monday purchases jumped 129% that year, while Black Friday purchases jumped 162%.

Mobile rendering is critical during this holiday season for email marketing, and a lack of mobile optimization will only contribute to declining holiday ROI.