Digital MarketingEmail MarketingAdobe Email Usage Study: “Emailed too often” named most annoying

Adobe Email Usage Study: "Emailed too often" named most annoying

Adobe's recently released Email Usage Study for 2019 reveals new insights about consumer habits and preferences around receiving marketing emails.

Our email habits are changing but we’re still heavily relying on this channel for our work and personal messages. Here’s what you need to know as a marketer for Americans’ email habits, according to Adobe’s latest “Email Usage Study.”

Email has become an integral part of our daily lives. In fact, there are up to five hours spent per day checking emails, both personally and professionally.

Adobe has released a survey of over 1,000 American workers looking at their email habits and how they’ve changed over the past years.

We are looking at the most interesting findings and what these mean for marketers.

How much time are we spending on emails?

Adobe has asked more than 1,000 American workers on their email habits.

The respondents are spending up to five hours a day checking their emails (both work and personal). In fact, they actually feel that the amount of time they are spending is ‘just right.’

More specifically, Americans are spending more than three hours a day checking their work emails. The total of 209 minutes a day is showing a decline in email usage at work since the respective number in 2019 was reaching 256 minutes per day.

Moreover, there is a declined number of people checking their emails while on vacation. What’s interesting is that not many people are able to achieve the coveted “Inbox Zero,” although millennials are more committed to doing this. Half of the millennials are hitting Inbox Zero with just one-third of Baby Boomers achieving it.

There is a trend of more people being more mindful with their email habits and even the slight decline in email usage shows that email can still be powerful but there is an understanding of the importance of setting some boundaries in it.

How to avoid sending annoying emails for brand offers

A closer look at this survey can help us understand the best ways to reach our target audience. Email marketing can be an integral part of your marketing strategy. The bigger picture requires you to come up with the best ways to overcome content fatigue while reaching consumers more effectively.

Adobe has asked American workers the main things that they find annoying in work and personal emails when receiving brand offers.

These are the four things that people find annoying in work emails:

  • Emailed too often (38%)
  • Marketer’s data about me is wrong (25%)
  • Too wordy/poorly written (24%)
  • Urging me to buy a product I’ve already purchased (21%)

These are the four things that people find annoying in personal emails

  • Emailed too often (43%)
  • Urging me to buy a product I’ve already purchased (24%)
  • Marketer’s data about me is wrong (23%)
  • Too wordy/poorly written (23%)

In both cases, the frequency of emails is vital. It’s important to be able to find the right timing when sending offers to consumers, from the right time of the day to the best days and the number of emails you need to send. In a work environment, wrong use of data is also very important for the respondents. It can make a brand offer more annoying if you’re not sending the right offer to the right person.

Moreover, bad copy and bad use of segmentation can also affect the success of your emails.

To sum up, the top things you need to revise in your email marketing to avoid annoying your consumers are:

  • Look at the frequency of your email campaigns
  • Improve segmentation to reach the right audience with every email
  • Revise your copy to create more successful emails that speak to your audience
  • Improve personalization to send the right email to the right people (rather than sending irrelevant emails)

How to improve email personalization

Email personalization can improve your email marketing strategy, provided that you succeed in it.

Adobe wanted to find out the top things that frustrate people when receiving emails that are supposed to be personalized:

What is most frustrating (work emails):

  • Recommendations don’t match interests (33%)
  • Misspelling name (19%)
  • Expired offers (19%)
  • Offer not appropriate to season/location (15%)
  • Promoting things I’ve already purchased (15%)

What is most frustrating (personal emails):

  • Recommendations don’t match interests (31%)
  • Misspelling name (19%)
  • Expired offers (19%)
  • Offer not appropriate to season/location (15%)
  • Promoting things I’ve already purchased (15%)

Irrelevant recommendations seem to be the most frustrating thing both for work and personal emails. It is an easy indication of a problem in personalization and it should be a priority for brands to avoid this mistake when trying to improve their email success.

Moreover, a misspelled name is another good indication that a brand is not paying enough attention to the consumers while expired offers can also be a sign of a lack of systems to avoid such mistakes.

It is very important to understand all the things that can frustrate our target audience so that we become more careful when implementing our emails marketing strategies.

Takeaway

It’s useful to look at Adobe’s findings in their recent ‘Email Usage Survey’ to understand how Americans use email but also how we’re evolving in our email habits and our expectations from brands.

According to Sarah Kennedy, VP of Global Marketing, Digital Experiences at Adobe:

“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.

When you are responsible for the overall digital strategy or when you’re managing email campaigns, it’s good to focus on what consumers want from the emails they receive. It is a great way to improve your email marketing success while paying close attention to your audience’s needs.

Email usage is still at a high level, despite the slight decline compared to 2016, but personalization is more important than ever.

The more time you’re spending in building successful segmentation and personalized messages, the higher the chances of maintaining a happy list of email subscribers.

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