Increasing volumes in the UK

Alchemy Worx has just launched their twice-monthly newsletter Email-Worx, and once a month they will be reporting on different aspects of B2C emails received via their monitor. The information reported on will include volumes, frequency, send days, from addresses, subject line lengths, spam folder delivery and more and is aptly named the Alchemy Worx Consumer Mailbox Index, or AWCM Index for short.

One of the findings in this month's report was that email volumes in the UK have risen by 43% between August and November, 2008.

Dela Quist, CEO says "As a result of the credit crunch, retailers are under a lot of pressure to reduce their margins so it is not really surprising that they are trying to reduce their costs by switching to email – which is still by far the cheapest way of getting offers out to their customers. This huge increase in email volume is not necessarily a bad thing for consumers; most people will tolerate a full inbox if the emails they get deliver real value.

Put it this way would you as a consumer prefer more emails and lower prices or higher prices and a clever ad campaign in the press or on TV?"

Another key finding was that during this period,  Monday and Friday were tied leaders for volumes sent (25% each), followed closely by Thursday (23%), then Wednesday (20%), Tuesday (12%) and the weekend (5 and 4%).

To view this month's AWCM Index click here
To sign up for email-worx click here.

Comments

[Jules]

I think the point about brand loyalty is important. In increasingly busy inboxes people are only going to move for what they trust.

[Kath Pay]

Hi Neil, thanks for sharing this...I don't think she's alone in doing this :)...but this does say alot for brand loyalty and the fact that she believes she getting value from her regular communications from them.

It will be interesting to see over the next couple of months how much of this increase was due to the Holiday Season and how much was/is attributable to the 'credit crunch'.

[Neil Anuskiewicz]

I meant to say in that last sentence that she does not want to *unsubscribe* from these lists because normally the volume is reasonable.

[Neil Anuskiewicz]

My comment is only anecdotal but I know someone who has subscribed to a lot of clothing retailer email lists and they all sent, what she thought, were too many emails on the run up to the holidays.

She said it got so bad that she ended up deleting and not reading any of them. She does not want to subscribe because normally the volume is reasonable and she gets good value.