EMAIL ADDICTS: Gmail Users Consume the Most Email

Do different personalities choose different email clients, or is it that different email clients foster different habits? Will a Yahoo Mail user open and read as much email as the average Gmail user? This is the type of data that can be essential for both researchers and marketers.

eMarketer picked up on some recent numbers released by MailChimp that indicate that, in fact, Gmail users are more likely to open emails and click on links within them when compared to the other mail email clients.

The following is a graph of email engagement, based on MailChimp’s analysis of over 184 million emails:

While Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL mail users are very similar in terms of the amount of email they read (the low 20% range) and how often they click on links (between 4.2% and 4.5%), Gmail users open emails at a 30.9% rate. They also click on links 6.4% of the time.

As eMarketer points out, Gmail also produces the lowest bounce rate of all email services, although that probably has more to do with Gmail’s spam protection than any other factor. As for why Gmail users are more engaged with email, the answer may be about Gmails more tech-savvy demographic, or it could be that the Gmail interface is more friendly to opening emails. It’s tough to stay.

Gmail’s still a smaller player in the scheme of things, though. Yahoo Mail still dominates with about 106 million visitors, as compared to Gmail’s 36.9 million uniques, just over 1/3 of Yahoo’s traffic. As Gmail continues to grow, these engagement numbers may change. As a marketer though, you should be thrilled with Gmail subscribers to your email lists.