| Last updated: August 2010

Email facts

email statsThere are 1.4 billion email users. This figure is predicted to reach 1.9 billion by 2013 (source).

The three largest webmail services attract 190 million unique visitors per month in the US alone. Between them, they have over 600 million global users (source).

57% of adult US Internet users check or send email on a daily basis (source).

New research indicates that email use is growing, encouraged by smartphone sales and increased use of social media. See:

"Email is not dead because people want to write to one another, using their email accounts, in more than 140-character bursts," says Neil Schwartzman, Executive Director, CAUCE

"Email is not going to disappear. Possibly ever. Until the robots kill us all," says Paul Buchheit, a founder of FriendFeed

 

Email arguments

email statsMedia hype often leads to "email is dead" headlines, followed by praise for whichever new technology killed email this time. It never happens.

However, new developments mean the way people use email is changing. Numerous authors have addressed the issue of email's longevity and use. Here a selection:

 

And email marketing?

email marketing statsDMA research puts the ROI of email marketing at US$43.62, almost double that of search advertising and better than any other direct marketing channel (source).

A survey of almost 2,000 subscribers to MediaPost revealed that the most popular media for marketing investment in 2010 will be....email (source).

The State of Retailing Online 2009 survey reported that email was cited most often as a successful tactic (source).

A 2009 survey of over 5000 senior US executives found that email was the channel they were most likely to invest more in (source).

...find more stats: Why do email marketing? | EmailStatCenter | 2010 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide