The State of Email in 2019 — Are we using email the right way?
Email today is as indispensable as ever. This is especially true in the business world. From interacting with customers to engaging with prospects and potential hires, email is the go-to tool for quick, reliable, and effective communication.
Yet, at the same time, email creates clutter and affects our productivity levels at work. An ugly byproduct of a great tool.
We receive a lot of unnecessary emails at work — about things that don’t concern us. We check our inbox every time there’s a notification. We have long discussions over emails — ones that should ideally take place over the phone or in person — that only result in never-ending threads.
So, the real problem isn’t Email but how we use it. Our team at Hiver decided to get to the bottom of how people at work use and interact with emails. We analyzed the email usage of 1000 email accounts that use Hiver — and processed over 300,000 email threads and 4.7 million emails.
Some of the insights we discovered were extremely astonishing. Here’s a quick summary.
1. Inbox Zero remains a distant dream
Touted as one of the best ways to counter email clutter, Inbox Zero is an approach that aims to keep the inbox empty — or almost empty — at all times. The idea behind keeping your inbox at zero messages is to ensure that you aren’t distracted by tasks you need to get done from your inbox.
That said, achieving inbox zero is only getting tougher day by day, and the reason is simple: the number of emails we receive is continuously on the rise.
An average professional receives close to 180 emails every day. And this number is steadily increasing every year. Between 2017 and 2018 alone, the daily email influx went up by 13%.
What’s more astounding is that people don’t even open 40% of the emails they receive. And of the 60% emails they read, they only reply to 16% of them.
2. Cc overuse has become second nature
If there’s one thing we do excessively on emails, it’s Ccing. It’s something deeply rooted in the culture of most companies. We Cc others just to keep them in the loop. There are also instances where we want our managers’ input on something.
Consider this: 8% of emails people receive are those that they’ve been Cc’d on.
Ask yourself if you really want to Cc this person. Do they need to be kept informed about what’s going on? Are they going to contribute anything to the subject at hand?
Why is this important? While people open 84% of emails they’re Cc’d on, they reply to only 19% of them. This clearly shows that we can extensively cut down on Ccing and only loop in someone if absolutely necessary.
Is your inbox making you feel overwhelmed? Are you looking to spend less time on emails and instead focus on more important things at work?
This report will provide you with detailed insights on where you need to get started to combat inbox clutter.
Get your copy of ‘The State of Email in 2019’ report.
3. The over-dependence on email forwards
With email, the only way to share information with colleagues is via forwards. So, when there’s a need to discuss and collaborate online, people simply forward emails by habit, clogging inboxes further.
So much so that a staggering 13% of the emails one receives are forwarded to them.
But do we really care about forwarded messages? Not really. Of the emails forwarded to people, they open 70% of them but reply to only 20%.
4. Managing email groups can get confusing and chaotic
Most companies today have email groups like info@, support@ or finance@ to handle external as well as internal communications. These inboxes are usually managed by members of the concerned teams. And usually, there are a lot of emails arriving in these inboxes on a daily basis.
But, here’s the real problem: every employee who is part of a team inbox receives a copy of each incoming email, in their Primary inbox. In fact, 51% of emails people receive in their inbox are group emails — sent to be a shared inbox or distribution list.
Of these group emails, people only open 57% of them, replying to 14%.
The low open rate might be because these emails are meant for someone else in the team. If that’s the case, companies need to find a better way to manage group emails. There needs to be a system that routes the email only to the concerned person, thereby not cluttering other team members’ inboxes.
The goal of this comprehensive study was to help people understand what type of emails are taking up their time — when you know what the problem is, it’s a start towards solving it. For instance, when you realize that Cc-ing creates clutter, you’ll start being more careful about it.
And as you start minimizing email clutter, you’ll find yourself become more organized and productive at work.
