eMarketer fanfared the results of a MailChimp survey result this week. There are millions of users of “free” email through providers like Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft with Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and Hotmail, respectively. AOL is included in the report, although its services are not free; the email is part of the overall package. Of those users, however, which are the most “engaged” with their email?
According to eMarketer, despite the fact that the actual products/services rendered are very similar, the survey reveals different behaviors between the users of the brands.
Of the top four email service providers, AOL users revealed an 0pen rate of about twenty percent, and Gmail users topped the survey out at almost thirty-one percent. The click rate on e-mails sent to Gmail accounts was significantly more than that of Yahoo!, AOL and Hotmail users.
Why is this? Perhaps some longstanding AOL users, who have never switched providers are more wary of email and less likely to enticed with new offers. Anecdotally, the Marketing Consigliere knows a lot of “Innovator” and “Early Adopters” who have jumped on the Gmail bandwagon, and they may be more enthusiastic about using email and checking out news and offers. With almost 150 million users, the free version of Gmail is one of the most popular email platforms in the world.
These are astounding results for email marketers. Of course, many factors are at play including the usual- “subject” line and “from” line. Based on the open rate statistics from your email campaigns, do the freemail users on your email lists have similar rates to those posted above? Hopefully if you don’t have to scrub freemail users from your list for fear of being blacklisted, you can get the analytics and share them. Tell the Marketing Consigliere what you can find out…
