Key insights from Adobe’s third annual consumer email survey, essential reading for brand marketers.

The survey shows that email significantly trumps direct mail, mobile apps and social media as the best way to deliver offers to consumers.

However, there is still a great degree of frustration around emails not being properly targeted or informative enough. 

• 61% of consumers cite email as their preferred way to receive offers from brands. This is up 24% YOY. This is followed by direct mail (18%), brand mobile app (6%) and 5% social media.
• 34% get frustrated when brands recommend items via email that do not match their interests.

Email still king, but people are achieving more balance

More people it seema are logging off after work. The overall number of hours spent on email each day has decreased 27 percent from last year with declines across both personal and work accounts.

• 20 % never checking work emails outside of work hours, a 43% increase YOY.

Improving the effectiveness of email marketing

Too many emails, slow loading images and making people scroll are still key frustrations for consumers.

• 50% of consumers feel marketers send promotional emails too frequently.
• 20% are frustrated by having to wait for images to load.
• 19% don’t like having to scroll too much through emails.

Adobe’s top tips

Based on the research, Adobe has highlighted four areas for marketers to focus on to improve campaign effectiveness and brand loyalty.

• Personalise. Know your customers in order to communicate with them.
• Inform: Focus your messages on the information consumers want.
• Mobilise: Make sure they aren’t waiting for images to load or scrolling too much.
• Pace Yourself: Respect the inbox zero crowd!

Adobe Campaign’s third annual consumer email survey was conducted online with 1,000 white-collar workers in the U.S. The details of the study are available on their website.