Research: How People Use Mobile Email

This is interesting research. Certainly good things to keep in mind if you're crafting newsletters--they give some fantastic guidelines in the full research.

But, I wonder if the Blackberry effect has just exacerbated itself. I'm a user that has my personal and work email coming to my phone, but I still treat them very differently. I don't get notified when my mailbox gets a little fuller. I get plenty of email, and if my phone buzzed for every one, it would buzz to the point of annoyance for me. Also, my email tends to be fairly lower on the signal/noise ratio than, say, a phone call or a text.

So, it surprises me that 87% of the people have notifications turned on. I mean, why? Why would I care that I got a newsletter? I don't have to open it immediately. The information is just not that urgent. Do people just have that important of email communication going back and forth?

While it's geared toward newsletters, but I think the research points to some things that we need to keep in mind with mobile email. I was once yelled at for sending an email at 3AM, because somebody's phone went off and they woke up. More and more, I see email being treated as synchronous communication rather than asynchronous. If I respond to you within one work day, then I don't owe you an apology. It appears this research points to the ubiquity of acceptance of email as semi-synchronous communication. I'm not really comfortable with that idea, but it appears I'm fighting a losing battle.

I've always been a huge fan of the entire MailChimp library, both in terms of concept and execution. It's a win-win for everyone, MailChimp gets to promote their brand and platform and give potential users something unique, while we get free information distilled in an extremely user-friendly fashion.