Subscribers to Google's popular Gmail service exhibit higher click and open rates and lower bounce rates than subscribers to Yahoo mail, Hotmail and AOL email, and thus appear to be more engaged with the email messages they receive, according to a study by Mail Chimp.
A recent analysis of the statistics for more 184 million emails sent from MailChimp's email service segmented the message recipients by email provider (Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, Comcast). It revealed that emails sent to Gmail users had a 30.94% open rate (compared with 25.54% for mails sent to Yahoo.com domains, 20.09% sent to AOL.com domains and 23.79% sent to Hotmail.com domains).
The study also found that Gmail users exhibited a 7.41% click rate (compared with click rates less than 5% for the other services):
MailChimp noted that the number of emails it sent overall to Gmail users (29 million) surpassed the number sent to subscribers of AOL (28.75 million), even though AOL has been around for much longer. However, in terms of emails sent, Yahoo and Hotmail are still the more "mailed-to" domains.
Though MailChimp did not offer definitive conclusions for why Gmail subscribers appear more engaged, MailChimp's Ben Chestnut said in a blog post that it "could be some demographic kinda thing."
In what may or may not be related to these findings, a recent report on email deliverability from Return Path revealed that Google's Gmail service is the most difficult US-based ISP for permissioned marketers to reach, with 23% of emails that marketers sent to Gmail never reaching the inbox. This more intense filtering may be a factor in ensuring that that more relevant emails reach users who are interested in them, resulting in more clicks.
Note about the data: The study also included an analysis of emails sent to the Comcast.com domain, but Mail Chimp found them to be too aberrant to include in the initial report uand is investigating the numbers further. Also, there are no abuse complaint numbers for Gmail because Mail Chimp said gmail has no feedback loop and it has no way of measuring complaints.
In related news, data from comScore found Google search users are more inclined to search, and also more loyal, than Yahoo and Microsoft searchers.
