Some people say email is dead. Other’s know it’s not because they spend over half their day checking and responding to email. To find out how prevalent email is in our work and play life, Adobe did a study to explore how present email is in our “always on” world and to understand the opportunity their is to take this proven channel to the next level with digital marketing. To read more about the study, click here
. Who Did Adobe Survey? Adobe surveyed of 400 U.S. white-collar workers and asked about their use of personal and work email. They complemented this by surveying marketers and using Adobe Digital Index (ADI) resources to answer questions about email marketing and its impact in the cross-channel environment. Adobe surveyed marketers to answer the question about email marketing and its impact in the cross-channel environment, the following reveals some of those preliminary findings.
What Did the Study Reveal?
- 9 out of 10 consumers constantly check their personal email from work and their work email at home; on average they spend nearly six and a half hours each weekday on email.
- Respondents reported commonly checking their email while engaging in other tasks such as watching TV/movies (70%), while in bed (52%), vacationing (50%), talking on the phone (43%), using the bathroom (42%), while driving (18%).
- 58% of respondents say that email is their preferred way to be contacted by a brand, however, consumers want fewer emails (39%) and fewer repetitive emails from brands to make email offers less annoying/intrusive (32%). This suggests the customer experiences – especially on mobile – ought to be top-of-mind for marketers.
- More than one-third of respondents (34%) said they have created new email addresses to get away from spam messages, so relevance and personalization are increasingly important.
- Almost half of the respondents said they think their use of email in both work and personal communications will increase over the next two years.
- Surprisingly, Millennial consumers are even more email-dependent than the average adult. This is likely due to their mobile use; 88% of Millennials check email on smartphones, compared to 76% who use desktop or laptop computers.
MY POV: eMail is not dead. These results suggest that there is an opportunity for email as a key channel in a cross channel strategy – with relevance and personalization as guiding principles for effective email marketers. Email marketing is at its maximum effectiveness when it’s fully integrated across all phases of the campaign strategy.
It may seem as though marketers generally play down the significance of email early in the campaigns, but the data needed to mount an effective email campaign is being collected during research and consideration phases of customer engagement. Then, as marketers follow the customer through acquisition, conversion and retention, email can kick into action to exercise its impact and power. While it can be very confusing to keep up with all the various channels, email still seems to be a very relevant one, when used wisely.
@DrNatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
