Email use remains strong despite social media buzz

Written by Adelina Chelniciuc on March 17, 2010. Posted in Around the world, Articles, KPI

Merkle, a US based provider of fully integrated customer marketing solutions, released at the beginning of 2010 a ten page report with the title “View from the Social Inbox 2010 – Actionable Information for Marketers“.

The report presents original findings about social media users’ attitudes and their behavior related to using social media versus email. Here are some of the highlights:

• “Time spent with personal, or social, email to friends and family is unchanged from last year, with 71% of respondents spending 20 minutes or more weekly. These numbers suggest social email use remains strong, contradicting earlier speculation that social networking would quickly replace traditional email use.”

• “Active social networkers are more likely to be avid email users, as measured by time spent with social email as well as number of times checked daily. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of social networkers use the same email account for their social networking messages and the majority of their permission, or opt-in, email.”

• “Social networkers are twice as likely to use mobile email (28% vs. 14%) and be “hyper email checkers” compared to their non-networked online counterparts – 50% of mobile email users check their personal email four or more times daily versus 32% of non-mobile users.”

The image below presents the difference in behavior between users of social media (in blue) and non-users of social media (in red).

This is a clear example on how indicators can provide relevant information about a certain area, informing decisions. Based on the information, email marketing continues to be a key communication tool for reaching potential and current customers. Measuring the email marketing performance is done through a variety of metrics, many of them listed in the library of KPI examples available on www.smartKPIs.com:

• % Newsletter click through rate
• % Bounce email rate
• % Opt-out rate
• % Opt-in rate
• % Emails read rate
• % Email response rate

Note:

The study “View from the Social Inbox 2010 – Actionable Information for Marketers” was conducted through an online survey of 3,281 U.S. adults age 18+ during the fall of 2009, by Merkle.  The report is available for free at the following link: www.merkleinc.com/viewfromsocialinbox2010.

References:

• smartKPIs.com (2010), “KPI examples for the Online presence – eCommerce Functional Area, Email Marketing subcategory”
• Merkle (2010), “View from the Social Inbox 2010 – Actionable Information for Marketers / From the Annual Consumer Email & Digital / Media Attitudes and Usage Study”

• Merkle, 2010
• Doktor Spinn

Tags: KPI in Practice, Marketing performance, Merkle, Performance in USA, Social Media performance