Available Studies

Unsolicited Email - Top Line Summary

October '97. Here's what our panel told us about unsolicited email:
(Survey data processed by NorthStar Interactive)

The Esearch respondent group (n=2041) was characterized by being young, educated, and relatively affluent with males (49%) and females (51%) evenly represented. Their marital status was also evenly represented (married 49%; not married 50%). Half of the respondents live in households with two members contributing to their annual income. Over half (58%) of the respondents did not have children under the age of 18 living in the household. The households were relatively small with a majority containing one to three members (68%).

The respondents tend to work in white-collar or professional jobs (60.4%) and the second largest group was "students" with 20% reporting this as their current employment status. Most of the respondents were employed by smaller companies with less than 100 people (60%). They work in a variety of industries with "services" representing the largest group (36%).

Most of the respondents (92%) reported that they received unsolicited email often or occasionally. When asked if unsolicited mail offended them, most reported that, "yes", it did offend them (77%). As age, education and income increased so did the number of offended respondents. Males and females were equally offended. The group receiving the most unsolicited email (at least one message a day) was far more offended by this type of email. "Offense" drops off quickly when unsolicited email is received occasionally (one message a week).

A large group (70%) reported that the topic of the email message determined whether they would read an unsolicited message and that they were not overly offended by this type of email. This crossed age, education, and gender boundaries. However, as income increased, this did not apply and they were more apt to "never" read unsolicited email and viewed it as "offensive".

When unsolicited email was received, a very small group (2%) thought they could always determine where the sender got their address. A much larger group thought that in some instances they could (Yes, 42%) or that they never (No, 44%) determine the sender. When they could not determine this, they became increasingly offended by uninvited email. The respondents who reported that they deleted uninvited email without reading it also thought it offensive. Many (38%) reported that the action they took depended on the content of the email, so uninvited email is not arbitrarily deleted from inboxes.

If the respondents thought that there should be regulations (46%) with regards to unsolicited email, they also were offended by this type of mail. This crossed all demographies (age, education, gender, income). However, there was a significant group that said "no" (32%) to email regulation or that they were "not sure" (21%).

In this group of respondents, participation in newsgroups and usegroups (61%) was quite high. This type of online activity is impacted by age and education level. More participation is seen in the age groups between 25 and 54. Also, post-graduates are more apt to participate in online discussion groups. Notably, this group showed a very low tolerance for unsolicited email.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

In this group, most respondents reported receiving unwanted email messages and many were offended by this occurrence. The offended feelings caused by unsolicited messages was positively correlated with age, education and income to some degree. It is important to note that the group receiving the most unsolicited email (at least one message a day) was far more offended by this type of email; however, as email drops to received occasionally (one message a week) the incidence of feeling offended drops off quickly. This could indicate a point-of-tolerance for unsolicited email that may be useful to online marketers who are using opt-out methods of gathering email addresses.

For this group of respondents, most reported that they used the email topic to determine if they would or would not read a particular message. This crossed age, education, and gender boundaries. This is an important finding because online marketers or researchers who desire a favorable response from an online target audience may want to carefully craft their email topics. However, it is important to note that as income increased, this group did not use the email topic as a determinant and were more apt to never read unsolicited email and viewed it as offensive. For online marketers, it may be wise to contact the upper-income target audience in a medium other than the email inbox.

Even though many respondents in this group were offended by unsolicited email and email of undetermined origins, there was a substantial group that will first look at the content of the message and then take some action - delete the message, flame the sender, act on it, file or discard, etc. So, they are not necessarily making an arbitrary decision to delete all unsolicited email without opening the message. This has important ramifications for creating the most compelling content and copy for email messages.

It is important to note that, even though there was a low tolerance for unsolicited email, there was a significant response against email regulation. This is possibly a reflection of the anti-intervention sentiment that is prevalent in the online community.

You can have the entire report, which includes crosstabs, tables, and demographic information for $500. For information, please call Janet Westergaard at 310-373-1894 (she'll usually answer her phone between 8:30a.m.-5:00p.m. PST), or send her an email message at westergaard@mindspring.com.