Email Recipient Usage and Insights for 2020 [Fun Quiz Included]

There’s a lot of sentiment floating around about email. It’s annoying, it’s going away. It’s driving me crazy. But what are people really saying and how are they interacting with email?

Twilio SendGrid recently conducted a study that interviewed 40 participants based in the UK and the US across generations to get these exact answers. The respondents were evenly distributed between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers.

The groups all answered 3-5 questions about the emails they received, and why they responded or engaged in the way they did. They also provided screenshots of email reasons for their responses. At the end of the week, the respondents were debriefed and asked additional questions to provide more qualitative insight.

Some of the results and answers were expected, while others were more surprising.

How well do you think you could guess the responses based on geography and age? We’ve compiled a quiz based on the findings so that you can find out.

We hope the answers will provide even more insight for your 2020 email program. After the quiz, read on for our takeaways and tips based on the study and how to access the complete guide!

Takeaways

Some of these answers may have come easy to you, while others may have surprised you. Either way, here are some of the big takeaways from the quiz:

• Older respondents typically have a few more email addresses than younger cohorts simply because they have been online for a longer time. Baby boomers and Gen Xers are also more likely to have a formal way of organizing their inbox with folders.
• Respondents across all generations admitted providing their emails to up to 100-150 different brands.
• Retailers should send promotional emails no more than once a week (over that and respondents say they start to get annoyed).
• Sending discounts for your goods or services can be an effective tactic–especially when the discount is 40% or higher.
• You can get a little too personal with email. Stay away from any deep personal information beyond buying history!

Hopefully, these fun facts can help guide and inform your email marketing strategy in 2020. There’s always room for improvement! There is a ton more insight and data in the report that we couldn’t get into the quiz. Download it today!