AOL: Consumers are addicted to email

Here is one more reason to authenticate your email marketing messages: an AOL study reports that consumers are addicted to - and overwhelmed by - their inboxes. According to the study more than 51% of email users check their inboxes at least 4 times each day. However, this addiction doesn't seem to be making a difference for legitimate email marketers. Is there anything you can do to change that?

by Kristina Knight

First, let's go through a few simple stats from the report. Researchers found that 46% of users consider themselves addicted to email and 20% reported to check their email a minimum of 10 times each day.

The problem seems the be the amount of email remaining in consumer inboxes; there is simply too much for consumers to deal with according to the report. Researchers found that 27% of consumers feel overwhelmed by their inboxes because there is such a huge recurring number of emails waiting to be read. These are legitimate emails - from friends or from email lists the user is subscribed to - and doesn't include the vast number of spam emails that consumers have to deal with on a daily basis.

Because of the sheer number of email waiting and the number of spam messages that can fool the consumer it is no wonder many marketers are turning to authentication tools. Email authentication programs offer legitimate marketers the ability to authenticate their messages with a lock-type symbol; this sets legitimate messages apart from spam messages so that consumers don't accidentally delete them.

This is a simple step that many email marketers have taken but many more have held back. This new report from AOL indicates that email authentication could be the only thing between your legitimate message and the delete key.