How Many Emails Are Sent Per Day in 2023?

After 50 years of active use, email is still the most popular form of online communication. There are over 4 billion active email users worldwide, and the figure keeps growing. With this enormous number of email users, you’ll probably wonder how many emails get sent each day. The answer is no less impressive: over 300 billion in total, or at least 4 million emails per second.

Many different types of emails are included in the 300+ billion figure. Certain related figures might be of particular interest to an email marketer. For instance, what percentage of emails are read on mobile phones? What percentage are personal or business emails? This article will break down global email statistics into bits that you can easily digest.

How Many Emails Does An Average Person Get Daily?

Figuring out how many emails one receives daily can be tricky. Regardless, we can try to shed some light on the matter.

Most reports claim that an average person receives 120 emails per day. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. That number applies mostly to people in corporate settings that require constant communication. You may probably be familiar with receiving routine emails like memos, CEO updates, meeting notifications, sales target updates, and so on. Most of these emails are one-way; they don’t require a response.

Apart from that, the average person receives around 40 emails daily. This number includes personal communications, newsletters, promotions, website notifications, etc.

But this figure alone is still not enough. Let’s take a closer look at how email technology is used globally.

General Email Statistics

• Ray Tomlinson, an American programmer, implemented the first email program on ARPANET, the predecessor to the internet, in 1971. He passed away in 2016, over four decades after his invention had witnessed unprecedented success.
• Email usage is growing rapidly. In 1997, about 10 million people had email accounts. Just two decades later, in 2017, that figure amounted to 3.7 billion. In 2022, nearly 4.3 billion people were active email users, and this number is expected to reach 4.7 billion by 2026. Email usage exploded in the 2010s because smartphones enabled more people to send and receive emails instantly.
• Gmail is currently the most popular email service, with over 1.5 billion active users worldwide. This service was created by Google, the American tech company best known for its eponymous search engine. It was launched in 2004 and grew rapidly because Google provided one gigabyte of free storage, nearly 100x of what competitors offered. The storage has since been increased to 15 GB, which is enough for most users.
• Outlook and Yahoo Mail are the second and third most popular email clients. Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo Mail together control the majority of the market, and the leftover is split between niche email clients like Proton Mail, Zoho Mail, Mailbird, Spike, etc.
• An estimated 333 billion emails were sent daily in 2022, up from 269 billion in 2017. This figure is expected to top 400 billion by the end of this decade.

• Millennials (aged 25 to 40) receive more emails than Gen Zers (9 to 24). The latter receive 1 to 20 emails daily, while Millennials get 6 to 50 emails. The reason is easy to understand: Millennials are more likely to hold corporate positions that require frequent email communication, while Gen Zers are mostly students or workers early in their careers.
• Men use email at work more often than women, though with a slight gap. Of working professionals aged 16 to 24, 94.8% of men reported using email compared to 92.3% of women.

Mobile Email Statistics

• 58% of online traffic comes from mobile devices.
• Over 60% of all emails are opened on mobile devices. Nowadays businesses must optimize their emails for mobile displays, or risk alienating the majority of recipients.
• Over half of emails read on mobile devices stay open for more than 8 seconds.
• 40% of people aged 18 and below always open emails on mobile devices first.

The above stats indicate that mobile-friendliness is one of the most important considerations for any email sender.

Statistics For Email Opens, Click-Throughs, and Bounce Rates

• The average email open rate across different industries hovers at 21%. It’s higher for some industries and lower for others. Yet if your email open rates are below 20%, it’s a cause for concern.
• The average click-through rate for emails is around 2.5%.
• 2% is the highest acceptable bounce rate for your mailing list. Anything above this figure signals problems that need to be solved.
• The non-profit sector has the highest email open rate, followed by other industries like real estate, food, health care, restaurants, etc.
• Personalized emails get 50% higher open rates than non-personalized ones.
• The longer an email stays in a recipient’s inbox, the less likely they will open it.
• Transactional emails have higher click-through rates than other types of emails.

Email Multimedia Stats

• An 80:20 text-to-image ratio is suitable for most types of emails. You can tweak it to 60:40 or 70:30. However, emails should not contain too many images, or mail services may mark them as spam.
• Emails with graphics have higher response rates than those without graphics.
• Emails with videos have higher click-through rates than those without.

The above shows that graphics and videos help improve user engagement. Emails should have a healthy mix of text and visuals to get good results

B2C/B2B Email Stats

Most business-related emails are either Business-to-Consumer (B2C) or Business-to-Business (B2B). B2C refers to businesses that sell products directly to end consumers, while B2B refers to businesses that sell products to other businesses.

• 81% of B2B marketers view email newsletters as their primary form of content marketing.
• B2B marketers say emails announcing new products and features have the highest open rates.
• Emails with clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons get better responses than those without CTAs. The same is true for emails offering discounts.

• Nearly three-quarters of businesses use email as their primary means of communication.

Stats Related To Email Length And Formatting

• The average email contains 434 words and takes approximately 3 minutes 18 seconds to read.
• The ideal subject line length is 41 characters or 7 words.
• Email subject lines with emojis are more likely to be opened than those without.
• 70% of email recipients delete poorly formatted emails within three seconds.
• 69% of them will report a message as spam based on the subject line alone.

Email marketing statistics

• Email marketing generates a high return on investment: up to $36 for every $1 spent.
• Over 80% of businesses use email marketing to acquire new customers.
• Global email marketing spending reached $12 billion in 2022 and is expected to go up to $60 billion by 2032.
• Email is a top revenue source for 59% of B2B email marketers.
• 96% of businesses believe personalized emails bring better results.

Email FAQ

How many emails are sent every day?

Over 300 billion emails are exchanged online each day, and this figure keeps growing.

Should my emails include emojis?

It depends. You can use emojis to message people who are already familiar with yourself or your business; emojis can improve your open rates. However, avoid using emojis for first-time recipients because they look unprofessional when introducing yourself.

Who uses email the most?

People aged 25 to 40 are the most prominent cohort. The email penetration rate for this group is over 90%. The lowest age group for email usage are people aged 65 or older.

What are the average email open, click, and bounce rates?

The average email open rate is 21%, the average click-through rate is 2.5%, and the average bounce rate is 2%.

What’s the average return on investment for email marketing?

Businesses report an average of $36 earned for every $1 spent on email marketing, implying an unprecedented 3600% return on investment.

Conclusion

We have provided essential statistics that every email marketer should take into account. We touched on different aspects of sending emails, including mobile usage, the B2B-B2C divide, email formatting, and general email marketing. As an email marketer or any professional who interacts via email, you should keep these figures in your mind.