Communication via email is still very much alive. Despite the invasion of smartphones and messaging apps, many people all over the world continue to rely on emails on daily basis. However, email habits have greatly changed over the past few years. Email response time has dropped from an average of 7 hours to just 47 minutes, according to a new email research.
The study, called the biggest email research ever conducted, included data from over 2 million internet users and 16 billion emails, which were all sent over the past few months. It is estimated that web users respond to one in four emails they receive. That, however, is not the case for people who receive huge amount of emails every day. For those who find at least 100 new emails in their inbox every single day, the response rate drops to 5%. That is simply because of the massive email overload.
Also, it was discovered that the median email response time today is 47 minutes. Compared to a research conducted four years ago, this is a drop by more than 6 hours. For people who receive more emails per day, the response time in 2011 was estimated at up to 50 hours! It is clear that the constant web access that people enjoy nowadays thanks to smart mobile devices has benefited email communication.
For teens, email response time is even shorter. According to the study, teenagers respond to an email in an average of 13 minutes.
A similar generation gap trend was also found when it comes to emails’ content. Most teens send emails with just 17 words. For millennials, the average word count for emails increases to 21 and for people aged 35-50 – 31 words. Email users over 50 tend to send messages with about 40 words.
Compare these statistics to the long handwritten letters or to the emails you have sent and received less than half a decade ago, and you will see that email communication has changed in many different ways. However, it still continues to the popular among people of all ages.
