The Email Wars

Just a little email marketing food for thought that I saw last week from David Daniels, Vice President JupiterResearch (Dec. 2007).
274: Average number of personal emails weekly.
304: Average number of business emails weekly.
26%: Opt-in email campaigns as percentage of total inbox email.
74%: Email users with 2 email accounts.

These are some good numbers to get your head around. Look at how many business and personal emails we are dealing with each and every week. And then think about you are working against close to 600 other emails on average for the attention and the midshare of your subscribers. So you better make them impactful, relevant and worth our time.

The funny thing is that on average the typical person has 2 inboxes. One work and one personal. Now this is the typical number we have, but I would wager than many of you have even more than this. This is because we are not average. So stop thinking about what you would do or where you would read your emails. We are not marketing to the abnormal person, or are we? The answer to this really depends on who you are marketing to. Mothers (maybe 2), blue collar (maybe one), tech heads (maybe 4-5). But my point here is to think like them. Understand who your market is and act accordingly.