Canadians' Love Affair with Email Continues
Vancouver, BC, October 29, 2001 - Email remains the number one online activity of Internet-enabled Canadians, and despite the ever increasing amount of email abuse, the majority say they are satisfied with email and that they couldn't live without it. This according to a jointly released study conducted by Emailthatpays and Ipsos-Reid.
According to this study, email is the most commonly participated in Internet activity by far. It is accessed multiple times weekly by 88% of online Canadians, and daily by 62%1, and the average user receives 22 messages per day at work or at home. Of the 30+ categories of other Internet behaviour that we track in this report, (such as visiting news sites, checking the weather, online banking, downloading music etc.) nothing else comes close in terms of frequency and impact.
"The impact of email in the workplace and at home has been nothing short of phenomenal. But we praise it on the one hand, and we curse it on the other," says Steve Mossop, a Senior Vice-President with Ipsos-Reid in Vancouver.
Email has fundamentally changed the way we communicate with people, and has become an essential tool for office communications. A full 85% of online Canadians believe that email has made them much more efficient in the workplace, including 31% who agree strongly. And nearly two-thirds (62%) prefer to communicate via email than through other methods. In fact, the majority go as far to say (52% agree; 21% strongly), that they love their email so much, that they couldn't live without it. All of this has resulted in generously high satisfaction levels with email, with nearly 70% providing top-box ratings (8,9,10 out of 10), and close to 30% midrange ratings (4-7 out of 10) with respect to work or home email satisfaction scores.2
CEO Dan Hunter from Emailthatpays, one of Canada's leading email marketing companies, says "Although Canadians are highly dependent on email for information and communication purposes, they also consider their email inbox to be a very personal space. Marketers need to remember this. There is a right way and a wrong way to market through the email channel and companies have only one chance to get it right."
However, Canadians' infatuation with this relatively new communications medium has also resulted in information overload as well. A full 62% agree that they receive too much irrelevant email, and 39% say they can hardly keep up with all the email they receive. About 57% check their business-related email outside of normal business hours. In fact, many (42%) actually dread going on vacation or taking days off because of the amount of email that they will need to respond to upon return!
"This is a testament to the fact," says Dan Hunter, "that companies must ensure they are sending only appealing and relevant messages to their subscribers from the get-go. Those who pay attention and speak to people with their particular interests in mind will not only avoid the delete key, but will set themselves apart from the competition and create a dialogue that is beneficial to both parties - the marketer and the consumer."
This information overload coupled with more extreme forms of email abuse poses a significant problem for users of this medium. Besides the annoyance of receiving irrelevant messages from colleagues (21% frequently; 45% occasionally), 46% frequently or occasionally experience the misuse or abuse of blind copying. A further 42% have often been the uncomfortable recipient of an email that has had the wrong tone, and one-quarter experience miscommunications as a result of the tone of an email.
Joke emails are also contentious issue, but Internet users are split. About the same proportion agree they often receive joke emails that they consider inappropriate (37%), as those who agree they look forward to receiving joke emails at work (35%).
"People have forgotten their manners at the email table when it comes to inter-personal email communications. Things that were unacceptable in a phone conversation or a person-to-person discussion have suddenly become the norm among email users," says Steve. Its' an example of a classic technological conundrum; we have invented this wonderful technology, but have neglected to consider the rules or the ethics surrounding its usage. "
Spam is also a significant problem. On an unprompted basis, 43% of Internet users say that their number one pet peeve of email usage is spam, or unsolicited junk mail. This has five times as many mentions as the next often-cited problem of unsolicited sales requests, chain letters, pornography, jokes and viruses (each mentioned by 8% or less). Many Internet users unsuccessfully try to unsubscribe to spam or to an email newsletter, as 42% describe this as a frequent (15%) or occasional (27%) problem.
"In fact," points our Dan Hunter of Emailthatpays, "unsubscribing from a blatant spammer's email might do more harm than good as it verifies that there is, in fact, a live person on the receiving end."
Steve Mossop also says "I believe that as much as we love email, we are reaching the threshold of tolerance when it comes to the negative aspects of this medium. Eventually, people will just turn off the switch by installing individual, or company-wide software that will screen out unsolicited messages, putting up a significant barrier to the successful rollout of email marketing that has been the hype of marketers in recent months"
1Up from 84% using email weekly and 53% daily in the exact time period last year
2On a scale of 1-10, where 10 is excellent, and 1 is poor.
The "Canadian Inter@ctive Reid Report" is the largest, most comprehensive and authoritative source of its kind about quarterly Internet trends in Canada. The results are based on two separate data collection instruments. In the first, 1,000 web users from Ipsos-Reid's Canadian Internet Panel are surveyed online. Panelists are chosen through random telephone surveys conducted on an ongoing basis across Canada. Results are complemented by a further 1,000 interviews via telephone with Canadian adults in order to verify results of the panel, and track issues among non-Internet users. Data for this release was taken from two quarters of interviews conducted between September 6th and 25th, and June 22nd and June 30th 2001. These data are statistically weighted to reflect the population proportions of regular online users by online expertise and regional distribution. Our panelists represent approximately 12.6 million Canadian adult Internet users who are online for one hour a week or more (there are a total of 15.6 million adults who have Internet access).
With a national sample of 1,000 (for each component), one can say with 95% certainty that the overall results are within a maximum of 1773.1 percentage points of what they would have been had the entire population of Canada's regular online users been surveyed. The margin of error will be larger for sub-groupings of the survey population.
Established in 1979, Ipsos-Reid is Canada's leading market research and public opinion company. Its is best known for the Angus Reid Express Poll, the most widely quoted source of public opinion in the country. Founded by Dr. Angus Reid, Ipsos-Reid has conducted extensive market and social research in 80 countries and in 40 languages, and serves clients around the world through more than 300-professionals and 1,000 data collection staff in eleven offices. The company is a member of the Paris-based Ipsos Group, ranked among the top ten research companies in the world.
Emailthatpays (EMTP) is a "permission-based" email marketing and integrated advertising strategies company in Vancouver, B.C. Combining online direct marketing technology with promotional, marketing and brand expertise, EMTP's infrastructure is set up to deliver a full slate of innovative marketing solutions to a vast array of products and organizations. EMTP's services include the design, delivery, tracking and analysis of targeted "one-to-one" email campaigns, customized loyalty programs, comprehensive list management and brokerage packages and the creation, integration and execution of both online and offline advertising strategies.
For more information on this news release, please contact:
Dan Hunter
CEO Emailthatpays
428 West 6th Ave
Vancouver, BC
V5Y 1L2
604.215.2500
Dan Hunter
Steve Mossop
Senior Vice President
Ipsos Reid
778.373.5001
[email protected]
