Email Volume To Reach 3 Trillion In The U.S. By 2007

Despite the impact of spam and overly aggressive filtering concerns, email is more omnipresent than ever--and growing, according to eMarketer's E-mail Marketing Report. The aggregator of market research for the interactive category projects email volume in the United States to nearly double from 1.5 trillion in 2003, to 2.7 trillion in 2007.

The report, issued Wednesday, finds that email penetration is at an all-time high of 91 percent among Internet users between the ages of 18 and 64. Search has the second highest penetration among Internet users.

While search marketing has stolen the thunder of online advertising channels, prospects for the email marketing sector could brighten.

Recent developments--such as the unified efforts of major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) America Online, Yahoo!, Earthlink, and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN to address the issues of email forgery and domain spoofing--could spur growth in the sector.

"Besides e-mail's popularity, it's a way for companies to get closer to their customers--at least those customers who give permission," says David Hallerman, eMarketer Senior Analyst, in a statement. Hallerman adds that "research from Intelliseek shows that 66% of consumers trust email they signed up for, while 95% distrust email they did not sign up for."

According to the eMarketer report, the compounded annual growth rate for email is 14.6 percent from 2002 through 2007, but after factoring in year-to-year increases in volume, the data shows that growth hit its peak in the early 2000's and has slowed slightly since.

Hallerman notes that if email can be said to be losing its effectiveness, "it is most likely due to three main challenges--spam, the filters used to combat it, and general inbox clutter."

The E-mail Marketing Report also highlights email strengths and weaknesses and the total email universe by size, volume, and type, as well as trends in individual and corporate email usage, issues regarding list maintenance, privacy, and the impact of spam.

Next story loading loading..