From achieving inbox zero to what motivates individuals to open an e-mail, Adobe’s annual “U.S. Consumer E-mail Survey Report,” captured emerging consumer behaviors when interacting with the platform.
The online survey ran from July 10 to 17 this year, polling more than 1,000 smartphone owners to deliver updated insights for brands and retailers.
The current wellness craze is reaching consumer inboxes. “The overall number of hours consumers spend on e-mail each day decreased 27 percent from last year — with declines across both personal and work accounts,” the report said. The amount of time consumers spent checking work e-mails decreased 20 percent — consumers spent 36 percent less time checking personal e-mail annually, the research found.
Despite new communication options such as Slack and Snapchat, individuals between 18-34 still prefer e-mail. In fact, the study found Millennials aim for “inbox zero” status, in which all messages have been read, filed or deleted.
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“Sixty-six percent of them report reaching inbox zero — that golden moment when you’ve responded to, and quickly deleted or filed, all of your e-mail messages,” the report said. “Inbox zero makes sense for this cohort — [younger consumers] are ultra-responsive when it comes to communication, and so at ease with technology that they happily dispatch and archive messages, knowing they can simply search and find whatever they need later.”
This is good news for brands. E-mail remains as the favored method to connect with brands — 61 percent of consumers indicated they prefer to receive offers via the platform, up 24 percent from 2016.
In order to maximize e-mail strategies, the report concluded that deploying personalization attributes. According the report, 34 percent of consumers get frustrated when brands promote items that don’t align with their preferences. What’s more, individuals posted high turn-off when brands aggressively pushed promotions. Forty percent of participants said they wished that e-mail content contained more information and less of hard sells.
To reach the elusive Millennial set, mobile optimization will go far. Twenty-one percent of individuals who check e-mail on their phones were frustrated by the amount of scrolling and lengthy load times. With that, be sure to consider the consumer as a full person — not simply a potential purchaser. Keep messaging succinct and thoughtful, overloading on the amount will e-mail flooding an inbox will likely have an adverse effect.
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