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Consumers prefer marketing offers via email over social media according to new study

Despite the influx of emerging channels and devices such as Snapchat, IoT, or in-car devices, Americans remain dependent on email according to a new survey.
Written by Eileen Brown, Contributor

Our use of email is evolving as we embrace the "always-on" email culture. We are using the communications method in a less formal way.

We live in a world that is becoming skewed to sending texts and emojis from our smartphones. We use smartphones to access our email, to triage, and respond to important communications.

According to a new study by digital marketing research division Adobe Digital Insights (ADI), email usage is on the rise,. This increase is driven primarily by consumers' shift to mobile.

According to the "Adobe Email Survey 2016," our time on email has in creased by 17 percent year on year. Adobe surveyed over 1,000 white-collar Americans for this year's survey.

It discovered that Millennials--consumers ages 18 to 34--spend the most time with email of any age group. 90 percent of them rely primarily on their smartphones to access their emails.

Almost 50 percent of Millennials admitted to checking their email while still in bed in the morning.

The survey found that smartphones have now overtaken computers for checking email. 21 percent more respondents said that smartphones were their primary device to check work email, compared with last year.

Workers now spend an average of 7.4 hours on weekdays checking their emails. They spend four hours checking work-related email, and 3.3 hours checking personal email.

This represents a six percent increase in the time we check our personal email, and a 28 percent increase in time checking work-related emails

The study asked users how their use of email is changing. Thirty percent of respondents said they see a trend toward emails becoming shorter.

38 percent of Millennials noticed the trend toward brevity. 72 percent of respondents said they have used an emoji in a personal email, and 42 percent have used them in work emails.

The study also found that consumers check their email almost everywhere. 69 percent of respondents said they have checked email while watching TV or a movie, and 53 percent have checked their emails whilst on vacation.

45 percent of respondents check their emails in the bathroom or whilst on the phone (44 percent). 17 percent admitted checking their mails while actually driving.

Consumers still clearly prefer to receive marketing offers via email. According to the survey, 49 percent of respondents said they preferred to receive marketing communications by email, compared to direct mail (22 percent).

However survey respondents find less than a quarter of email offers they receive from brands interesting enough to open.

47 percent said that too many emails from a brand is most likely to annoy people. Only nine percent actually prefer to be contacted by brands on social media.

Consumers prefer marketing offers via email over social media according to new study ZDNet
Adobe Data Insights

Respondents reported that they were annoyed with brand emails when they had to wait for images to load on a smartphone.

The survey shows that marketers need to up their game. Consumers have issues with marketing emails. We complain about the frequency of the mails, the quality of writing, and offers based on incorrect profile data.

Ryan Dietzen, senior market analyst at ADI said "I think the rise in email consumption has a lot to do with the fact that people are now relying on their smartphones more. Smartphones make email all the more accessible.

And Millennials, especially, can't resist the smartphone screen telling them something has just come in from a colleague or a friend. For marketers, that means the always-on consumer. There's not going to be a time when they're not reachable by email."

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