Earlier this year, we described the effect of Covid-19 on the use of email within our data centers, and the impact it had on our customers (OX Blog Post). However, the effect of Covid-19 is now even more far-reaching with respect to email.
It seems that more and more people are looking for new email solutions. We can see from our own statistics that our website is getting more hits than ever before. Also, the number of people trying out the OX App Suite demo system, that we have available on the website (Demo System), is soaring. This shows that service providers of all sizes are looking for new and enhanced email solutions in order to meet the increasing demand for good email.
We have seen from both personal experiences, as well as through research, that the use of email increased significantly during this Covid-19 period. Using newsletter open rates as a benchmark, on a global basis, the following has been observed: from January to the middle of February the global open rates were between 19% and 20%. Globally, as Covid-19 became more publicly known, email open rates climbed steadily. In March the global email open rate soared from 19.2% to 22.1%. By the end of March, they climbed again to about 23.0%.
Many people expected the use of instant messaging and video conferencing to rise, but few expected the use of email to rise so significantly. Some of this can, of course, be attributed to online retail. People are shopping a lot more online instead of going to physical shops and online retail generates a lot of email traffic. Some can also be attributed to the increase in online marketing, but the amazing thing is that users are consuming all this and more – all these new emails are being opened.
In conclusion, we have seen that Covid-19 has made consumers more open to all forms of digital messaging; businesses are using email more than ever before to engage with their customers and prospects; the use of email is increasing, and service providers of all sizes are looking at new and better email solutions.