Email Metrics Reveal 50% of Marketing Emails Are Deleted Within Two Seconds

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Jun 24, 2010, 03:07 ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 24 /PRNewswire/ -- More than 50% of email users delete marketing emails within two seconds of opening them, according to email metrics published today by Litmus. This is not a good sign for companies that rely heavily on email marketing such as Dell, Gap and Amazon.com.

"It's not all bad news, though," said Paul Farnell, CEO of Litmus. "Much depends on the content of the email. Some of the top email marketers are seeing 77% of recipients spending 10 seconds or more reading their messages. That's a sure sign their readers are engaged."

The report is the first of its kind, with the data compiled from a study of 14 million email recipients using a new technology called Litmus Email Analytics. This allows email marketers to monitor how long recipients spend reading their emails—a key engagement metric that has previously proved elusive.

"Engagement is becoming ever more important," explained Paul Farnell. "Email providers such as AOL and Yahoo! Mail are now actively monitoring engagement—if few people are reading one company's emails, they'll start being blocked entirely.

"This is good news for most of us, since it means email senders will need to provide much more engaging, useful information by email. That is, if they want to continue arriving in their subscribers' inboxes.

"Litmus Email Analytics lets senders track exactly how long people spend reading their messages. This is a completely new metric. We can even compare the numbers across different platforms—mobile users vs. desktop users, for example. The results can be very surprising," said Paul Farnell.

Unexpectedly, Litmus discovered that mobile users spend longer reading messages than people using desktop computers. Google Android and Apple iPhone users were found to read messages for around 15% longer than people using Microsoft Outlook.

"We're excited to give email marketers an edge using this new data. By comparing the statistics across multiple campaigns, marketers can see what their subscribers are really interested in," said Paul Farnell.

For more information about Litmus Email Analytics, visit www.litmusapp.com/email-analytics

About Litmus

Litmus provides software tools for email marketers to test and measure their campaigns. Since 2005 Litmus has tested over 20 million emails, and is relied upon by more than 30,000 agencies, marketers and designers worldwide. For more information, visit www.litmusapp.com.

Contact: Paul Farnell, 1-866-787-7030, [email protected]

SOURCE Litmus