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Permission-Based Email Tolerance Rises Slightly

The average number of companies that Americans voluntarily choose to receive email from has risen from nine to 10, indicating a slightly increased capacity for brand engagement via email, according to a study about attitudes and opinions toward permission-based email from Merkle.

This preference for a larger “inner circle,” as Merkle calls it, is a change from the past six years, when the number of companies from which consumers were willing to receive email held steady at nine. Merkle defines permission email as email that consumers have opted-in to receive.

The 2009 “View from the Inbox” email marketing report also found that there is an inverse relationship between the emails that are valued by consumers, such as transaction-related confirmations (64%) and account summaries (55%), and the quantities that they receive, such as news alerts (20%) and offers (18%).

Additional findings from the study:

• Consumers’ openness to receiving marketing messages in transactional email rose only slightly to 67% (vs. 66% in 2007), though the number of people who are not at all open to the practice has decreased since 2005.

• Time spent with permission email has stabilized since gains seen last year. Some 59% of all email users spend 20 minutes or more with permission email weekly, with more than one-quarter spending an hour or more.
• Though the average number of “inner circle” companies rose, half of respondents say they are less willing to sign-up for email communications when compared with just a few years ago.
• Permission email accounts for about a quarter of all time spent with email. This type of email is second only to emails that are sent to communicate with friends and family.

• Adding senders to address books is more common than previously thought. Slightly more than half (53%) of consumers have added at least one company to their address book to ensure that emails land in their inboxes. These consumers say they do so for 25% of the companies sending them email.
• The biggest reasons subscribers choose to opt-out of permission email continue to be lack of relevance (cited by 75%), followed closely by sending too frequently (73%).

“Marketers in today’s economy are relying heavily on the email marketing channel, which continues to gain popularity due to its low cost and high measurability,” said Lori Connolly, director of research and analytics in Merkle’s Interactive Solutions group. “As a result, inboxes are becoming more crowded with marketing messages, which can have serious implications for marketers relying on this channel. Our annual study shows that marketers must be careful not to overstep their boundaries and stick with relevant communications and appropriate timing or risk losing the trust that they have established with their customers.”

About the survey: Data for this survey were collected in August and September 2008 by the Harris Interactive Service Bureau (HISB) on behalf of Merkle. Harris Interactive surveyed 2,505 US adults age 18+ who check and/or send email at least once a week. Merkle was solely responsible for data analysis and for compiling the report of results which also states comparisons to previous studies.