US email survey - more relevancy required

Return Path's 2007 Holiday Email Survey (pdf) suggests that email marketers in the US and Canada need to work harder on improving subscriber relevance and engagement.

The study found email frequency to be an issue for many consumers - 36.2% said email volumes were higher than they expected when registering.

Backing up other research that shows recipients are only too happy to punish senders that go overboard, 24.8% of respondents said that they unsubscribed when hit with excess emails, while 22.3% reported the sender as a spammer to ISPs.

Other highlights from the survey include:

• 56.4% of respondents said they received high volumes of junk email from firms they know, while 65.7% received high amounts of spam (emails they have not asked for). 
  
   
• As a result of this perceived increase in email volumes, 47.9% of consumers said they were wary of signing up for emails in the future.
  
  
• 52.3% deleted messages that they didn't recognise.
  

Related research:
Email Marketing Roundtable Briefing, October 2007
Email Marketing Industry Census

Related posts:
How often should you email your customers?
The importance of targeting in email marketing

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