Which Group of Email Users Opens The Most Email?
By Anna Johnson on September 15th, 2009As reported by eMarketer, an analysis of marketing emails sent through MailChimp’s distribution service indicates that Gmail users are more likely to open and click on emails than other major online email users.
MailChimp found that open rates varied from just over 20 percent for emails sent to AOL users to a high of nearly 31 percent among Gmail users. The click rate on emails sent to Gmail accounts was more than 7.4 percent, compared with just 4-5 percent for Yahoo, AOL and Hotmail users.
Emails sent to Gmail users also had the lowest hard bounce rates, although eMarketer reckons this may be due to Gmail spam filters causing emails to disappear before registering a bounce! eMarketer cites a 2009 Return Path study showing that marketing emails sent to Gmail have a 23 percent non-delivery rate.
Gmail is used by nearly 37 million users, while Yahoo! Mail has 106 million and Windows Live Hotmail has 47 million.
So why are Gmail users more receptive to emails than Yahoo or Live users? Well, it could be because they don’t receive as many unwelcome marketing messages (i.e. based on a high level of non-delivery). Otherwise, MailChimp suggests that demographic factors could be at play. A younger, more tech and email savvy audience, perhaps?
Source: eMarketer, “Who Is Most Engaged with E-Mail?” eMarketer, September 8, 2009
September 18th, 2009 at 2:21 am
Perhaps email is on it’s way out as a marketing medium? The advent of social bookmarking is surely reducing the degree to which people are using email to communicate?