SendGrid, the leading email delivery service for the world's wanted email, today revealed the results of a study into global email engagement. Released today in conjunction with the 32nd anniversary of the invention of email, the data was collected over two 10-day periods in 2013 and 2014 respectively, with a data set spanning more than 8 billion emails sent by over 125,000 companies. Major findings include:
People read more email on Apple-manufactured devices than any other device or platform. Mac desktops, Macbooks, iPhones and iPads saw an average open rate of nearly 36 Million opens per day.
Linux-based devices are the fastest growing segment for email opens globally, growing by 329% in the last year.
Windows-based devices are the second fastest growing segment for email opens globally. On average, 32 million emails were opened per day on Windows devices in the last year, accounting for a 147% increase over the prior year.
Blackberry devices are the third fastest growing platform for email opens globally. Email opens on Blackberries grew by 127% in the last year.
Playstation accounts for just a small fraction of email opens globally, but email opens on the platform grew by 10% in the last year.
Nearly half of email opens (49.68%) tracked by SendGrid in the last year have been by email account holders in the United States.
However, for the first time since SendGrid began studying global email trends in 2010, the United States has fallen below 50% of email opens. In 2013, the U.S. represented 51.31% of global email opens versus 49.68% today.
The United Kingdom is the second largest region for email readership, representing 5.93% of email opens in the last year. Canada is third in email readership, with 3.68% of email opens in the last year.
As the world's largest email infrastructure-as-a-service provider, SendGrid is uniquely positioned to spot these email trends. SendGrid delivers 13 billion emails per month for more than 175,000 companies, including technology leaders like Pinterest, Spotify and Uber. In totality, this represents 2% of the world's non-spam email.
Paul Kincaid Smith, SendGrid's Vice President of Delivery, today also revealed his predictions for the future of email:
Application-generated email will rise as person-to-person email ebbs.
The global app economy was worth $53 billion in 2012, and is expected to rise to $143 billion in 2016, according to a recent VisionMobile study. App developers, CMOs and SMB owners will continue to leverage email as the number one customer engagement tool to drive adoption and retention. All of these stakeholders engage customers by sending marketing and transactional emails, which include receipts, password resets, notifications, social alerts and promotions. Email will remain the standard for online B2B and B2C communication, despite the rise in person-to-person messaging alternatives.
Spam filtering will continue to improve.
Leading mailbox providers like Gmail, Outlook.com and Yahoo are expanding. This increased centralization produces more efficient feedback and improves their spam filters. Individuals and organizations of all sizes value the spam protection provided by these large mailbox providers, where effective spam filtering is now a competitive differentiator. The new generation of spam filters rewards senders of wanted email, while simultaneously punishing senders of unwanted email.
Email quality becomes more important.
Spam filtering is becoming more personalized, and so effective email campaigns must become more personalized too. Senders of commercial email must deliver more relevance and value if they expect their email to be seen and opened. Quality trumps quantity.
Emerging opportunity for email delivery optimization.
Demand for email deliverability consulting will increase. There is a growing need for systems that can intelligently identify and broker communications between senders and recipients. The next generation of B2B and B2C email systems will help send the right message to the right person at the right time with the right frequency. There is a fertile opportunity for email program optimization—guidance that helps organizations send mail that is both wanted, appreciated, and even anticipated. That is the new frontier.
"The numbers we're releasing today underscore a simple fact, which is that email remains the backbone of the web and the social web. Most social networks and blogging platforms, the very technologies that were touted as email killers, require users to have an email address to sign up," said Jim Franklin, CEO, SendGrid. "The email channel is one of the primary methods for these newer apps and platforms to engage with their users and drive them back to the application itself. Simply put, email drives engagement, no matter what device or platform a person is using."
