According to the 2019 “Adobe Email Usage Study,” Americans check their work email (three-plus hours a day) and personal email (two-plus hours a day). This comes out to around five hours per day checking emails.
Considering the demise of email was predicted for more than a decade, the study shows people still value it. It is one of the most or most preferred methods of communication for work, important correspondence, and even marketing.
The reason email is still around is people know the technology and they feel comfortable with it. And as Sarah Kennedy, VP of Global Marketing, Digital Experiences, Adobe, says in the blog for the report, email is in almost every part of our day.
Kennedy goes on to say, “The Adobe survey findings solidify how important email still is in the everyday lives of our customers, and this means there is still a big opportunity for marketers to utilize email to engage with people in relevant and useful ways.”
For small businesses who are not using email for their marketing, this is great news. Because email is a cost-effective marketing tool with solid ROIs. And with the right solution in place, you can measure metrics to refine and adjust your campaigns to get even better results.
Email Usage Statistics
The Radicati Group reported the number of email users topped at 3.8 billion in 2018, and it is slated to grow to more than 4.2 billion by 2022. And the number of users is not slowing down. Not only that, but they are also spending a considerable amount of time with their email communications.
The respondents in the study say the five hours they spend is not too much. Seventy-one percent of them go on to say their email checking frequency is just right. These email usage statistics have not changed YoY for several years.
Forty percent of users are checking their work email outside working hours every four hours. The frequency goes up to every hour (10%), multiple times per hour (13%), constantly (10%) and never (24%).
When it comes to checking their personal email while at work, 52% say they do so every few hours. Others check it every hour (15%), multiple times per hour (14%), constantly (11%), and never (8%).
This data presents great opportunities for businesses to start using email for marketing and engaging with their customers. But it has to be right by personalizing the content and making it relevant to the user.
Kennedy makes a point to emphasize, “Contextual relevance and usefulness are critically important because you need both to deliver value to your customer and without them, you also risk being ignored.”
Delivering the Right Message
The survey says users open work emails more frequently than their personal emails at an 80 to 57 percent ratio. Furthermore, the respondents also say they prefer getting offers with emails (56% for work, 60% for personal). This is much higher than direct mail, social, and other marketing channels.
In work emails, respondents say they get emailed too often (38%) and the marketer data about them is wrong (25%). They also feel the emails are too wordy and poorly written (24%) along with urging them to buy an item they’ve already purchased (21%).
For the personal emails, 43% say they get emailed too often and purchasing the same item is next with 24% of the respondents. The wrong marketing data and wordy or poorly written emails come in with the same 23%.
Users are also frustrated the recommendations don’t match their interests, their names are misspelled, expired offers, inappropriate offers due to season or location, and promoting items they already purchased.
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