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    Professional Email Marketing Solutions |
Vision Statement: E-Mail: Not Dead, Evolving
Jul.01, 2026 in
Email Marketing
Author: hbr
INTRODUCTION
Periodically you may hear digital hipsters claim that e-mail is dead. Don't believe them. People still spend half their workday dealing with it, they trust it, and overall they're satisfied with it, according to our 2012 survey of 2,600 workers in the U.S., UK, and South Africa who use e-mail every day. E-mail is not dead, it's just evolving. It's becoming a searchable archive, a manager's accountability source, a document courier. And for all the love social media get, e-mail is still workers' most effective collaboration tool. It's far from perfect: Three-quarters of all e-mail is junk, and we're wasting lots of time dealing with less important messages. But it remains the mule of the information age—stubborn and strong. ;”>by Barry Gill
STATS
14% CRITICAL WORK
28% ESSENTIAL E-MAIL
24% FUNCTIONAL WORK
16% LOW-LEVEL WORK
10% PERSONAL
8% SPAM OR USELESS
WHAT DOES A YEAR’S WORTH OF E-MAIL LOOK LIKE? Each dot here represents one email sent to the average user in a year—11,680 in total. A full 74% is junk that never reaches the in-box. Fortunately, workers see only a small portion of the malware, phishing scams and promotional offers that bombard their accounts every day. Of the e-mails that make it into the in-box, 42% are essential or critical, and just 8% are spam.
INFERENCES
60% E-MAIL TO INDIVIDUALS
34% E-MAIL TO LISTS
23% E-MAIL TO TEAMS
19% TELE-CONFERENCING
8% FACEBOOK
6% BUSINESS COLLABORATION TOOL
4% LINKEDIN
3% TWITTER / MICROBLOG
15% VIDEO / WEB CONFER-ENCING
10% INSTANT MESSAGING
WHAT DOES A YEAR’S WORTH OF E-MAIL LOOK LIKE? Each dot here represents one email sent to the average user in a year—11,680 in total. A full 74% is junk that never reaches the in-box. Fortunately, workers see only a small portion of the malware, phishing scams and promotional offers that bombard their accounts every day. Of the e-mails that make it into the in-box, 42% are essential or critical, and just 8% are spam.
WHICH ARE THE MOST EFFECTIVE CHANNELS FOR COLLABORATION? When asked to select all the tools they trust for collaboration, respondents chose e-mail as the best, by far. Workers use 19 distribution lists on average. But 22% would like to see e-mail adopt a more social construction, using self-selected "followers" and "friends."
10% INSTANT MESSAGING
60% E-MAIL TO INDIVIDUALS
34% E-MAIL TO LISTS
23% E-MAIL TO TEAMS
19% TELE-CONFERENCING
8% FACEBOOK
6% BUSINESS COLLABORATION TOOL
4% LINKEDIN
3% TWITTER / MICROBLOG
15% VIDEO / WEB CONFER-ENCING
HOW DO WE ACCESS E-MAIL? The desk is still where we spend most of our time chipping away at the in-box, but some 40% of respondents access work e-mail outside the office during off-hours. Here's the breakdown of how much of their e-mail workers access, on average, from each device.
5% HOME LAPTOP
3% iPAD/TABLET
13% OTHER
8% MOBILE
11% HOME PC
60% WORK PC/LAPTOP
3% iPAD/TABLET
13% OTHER
8% MOBILE
11% HOME PC
60% WORK PC/LAPTOP
HOW MUCH TIME IS SPENT ON E-MAIL? In a year workers spend, on average, the equivalent of 111 workdays dealing with e-mail. Most would like better search functions and document management, and there's good reason to make that happen: A 10% increase in efficiency would buy back more than two workweeks per year per employee.
13% WRITING E-MAILS
15% READING E-MAILS
22% OTHER E-MAIL ACTIVITIES (SEARCHING, ARCHIVING, MANAGING)
50% NOT SPENT ON E-MAIL
HOW SATISFIED ARE WE WITH E-MAIL? While people are satisfied overall, satisfaction is slightly lower for the searchability of e-mail, and significantly lower for archive management: Only 44% rate that highly. The lowest satisfaction is with mobile access to e-mail: Only 37% rate it highly.
25% VERY SATISFIED
45% SATISFIED
23% SOMEWHAT SATISFIED
4% SOMEWHAT DISSATISFIED
2% DISSATISFIED
1% DON’T KNOW
WHAT DO WE USE E-MAIL FOR? Half of respondents believe that e-mail reduces the need for other file storage systems—meaning they are using it to archive important documents. Still, this function could improve. A third of users find e-mail search to be time-consuming and difficult to navigate. Average time to locate a document in e-mail is two minutes. We asked respondents to list the tasks they use e-mail for. Note that communication between individuals—the original intent of e-mail—isn't even listed in the top five activities.
76% EXCHANGING DOCUMENTS
69% SENDING INFORMATION TO GROUPS
61% IMPROVING COMMUNICA-TION ACROSS TIME ZONES
60% ACCOUNT-ABILITY
59% SEARCHING FOR INFORMATION
69% SENDING INFORMATION TO GROUPS
61% IMPROVING COMMUNICA-TION ACROSS TIME ZONES
60% ACCOUNT-ABILITY
59% SEARCHING FOR INFORMATION
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