National Email week: The facts and future of email
The second week of June each year marks National Email Week. Email has become a powerful communication tool. People all over the world love email so much that we send on average 250-350 billion emails a day worldwide.
Interestingly enough, it’s only half the number of text messages send (600 billion), just short of the number of Facebook Messenger chats (400 billion), and hits the ball out of the park with the number of Snaps sent via SnapChat per day (3 billion).
The first ever email
Ray Tomlinson is responsible for sending the first email. While he hadn’t been tasked to create email (he was worked on applications for MIT’s ARPANET project, which would eventually become the internet) he took a keen interest because it “seemed like a neat idea”.
The first email was sent between two computers set side-by-side, and although Tomlinson can’t remember the first message, he imagines it was “testing 123” or “QWERTYUIOP”.
Fun facts about email
- As webmail providers find inventive ways to ramp up cyber security, individual users aren’t as create. The most common email password is “123456”
- Spam emails accounts for 45% of the world’s email traffic
- 90% of people reply to emails within one day of receiving them, with teenagers averaging 13 minutes to reply
- 48% of emails are opened on mobile devices
- There are 4.6 billion email accounts world wide
- In a recent survey, one-third of US employees claimed they would rather “clean their toilet than their inbox”, also stating their cluttered inbox caused them stress
Email marketing tips for 2017
It’s recommended that email newsletters form a part of every complete digital strategy. To ignore them, would be cutting off a large portion of your customer base. According to HubSpot, 66% of consumers made a purchase due to an email sent and 77% of customers claim email is their preferred method of contact.
So, what email trends should you follow in 2017?
- Interactive emails involve an action within an email which triggers an event within the same email. Examples of this include carousels or image galleries, offer reveals, quizzes, and add-to-cart functionality
- Data personalisation aims to target the right content to the right person at the right time. Being able to translate your data into actionable signals will ensure customers truly get information relevant to their needs.
- HTML5 Video in email is predicted to finally take off – just be sure to build in a fall back for newsletter subscribers who are using an incompatible platform
Want to use email marketing in your business, but don’t have the capacity to build a campaign? iFactory have got you covered. We’re a digital and creative agency, who specialise in email marketing Brisbane. Check out our work and get in touch with us today to discuss your email marketing needs.
