Email value measures an email’s ability to influence change relative to time invested. With 200 billion spam emails sent daily and most workers untrained in email efficiency, the average email has painfully low value. Improve by monitoring usage, controlling automation, setting clear expectations, and refining practices.
Table of Contents
- Why does email value matter?
- What are the major email value detractors?
- What’s the value of the average email?
- How can you increase every email’s value?
- What tools help measure email value?
- Frequently Asked Questions
- What is email value?
- How many emails are sent globally each day?
- What are the biggest email value detractors?
- Why is the average email’s value so low?
- How can I measure email effectiveness?
- What makes an email coherent?
- How long should emails be?
- What’s the best way to reduce email spam?
- How do you improve organizational email efficiency?
- Can email value actually be measured objectively?
- Related Resources
- Related posts:
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- How to Block Emails in Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook
- How to Apologize Professionally in an Email
Key Terms
Email Value: An email’s ability to influence change (literal, emotional, or practical) relative to time invested.
Value Detractors: Elements that reduce email effectiveness, including spam, ambiguity, and poor targeting.
Email Coherence: The quality of being easily understood through proper organization, semantics, and scannability.
Why does email value matter?
289 billion
Emails sent globally every day
The Radicati Group estimates 289 billion emails are sent daily. While email enables global productivity, billions of these messages provide zero value.
What defines email value?
Email value exists for both writers and recipients. Writers gain value through responses, approvals, or completed actions. Recipients gain value through new information, clarification, or actionable materials.
We define value as an email’s ability to influence change – whether literal (new rules), emotional (relieving uncertainty), or practical (providing necessary information).
How does understanding email value help?
| Spot low-quality emails Identify spam and time-wasters proactively despite existing spam laws |
Write better emails Create more valuable content for recipients |
Improve efficiency Implement organizational changes that boost productivity |
What are the major email value detractors?
How much impact does spam have?
200 billion
Spam emails sent daily (69% of all emails)
Marketing spam accounts for 200 billion daily emails. While occasionally relevant, most waste seconds to minutes per message. Learn more: Why do emails go to spam?
Why are automated notifications problematic?
App notifications flood inboxes with updates on comments, privacy policies, and social media tags. While sometimes valuable, they often create external conversations requiring message-by-message reading.
What makes CC and BCC usage wasteful?
Common CC/BCC problems:
- Confusion over primary recipients
- “Just in case” additions clogging inboxes
- Minutes wasted per recipient determining relevance
- Unclear responsibility assignments
Learn proper usage: CC in email guide and BCC in email guide
How does ambiguity destroy email value?
| Ambiguity Type | Impact |
| Purpose ambiguity | Unclear why email was sent |
| Semantic ambiguity | Poor grammar creates confusion |
| Missing action items | No clear next steps defined |
| Unclear ownership | Nobody claims responsibilities |
| Overly simple responses | Single words lack context |
How does email length affect value?
Length impacts value through writing time and reading time. Long emails doing what short emails could accomplish waste everyone’s time. However, brevity that omits key details creates ambiguity.
Research shows optimal length varies by purpose. See our guide: Ideal email length
What makes emails incoherent?
Coherence requires three elements:
- Organization: Strong subject lines, clear introductions, organized body paragraphs, and proper closings with action items
- Semantics: Clean sentences with appropriate word choices, free of errors
- Scannability: Bullet points, bold text, and standout sentences for quick comprehension
What’s the value of the average email?
After years analyzing email data, we’ve found: the average email’s value is painfully low.
Why is average email value so low?
| No Training Workers never learn efficient email practices |
No Rules Companies don’t establish or enforce email etiquette |
No Awareness People underestimate time waste from poor emails |
Despite employee handbooks covering many policies, email communication standards remain absent from most organizations.
How can you increase every email’s value?
Step 1: How do you monitor email usage effectively?
EmailAnalytics provides comprehensive metrics without reading individual messages:
Improve your team's email response time by 42.5% With EmailAnalytics
- 35-50% of sales go to the first-responding vendor.
- Following up within an hour increases your chances of success by 7x.
- The average professional spends 50% of their workday on email.
Key metrics to track:
- Total emails sent/received
- Email categories breakdown
- Top senders and recipients
- Traffic by day/hour
- Thread metrics and time spent
- Response time analysis
These data reveal your best and worst emailers and what differentiates them.
Step 2: How do you control automated emails?
Take proactive steps to manage automation:
- Unsubscribe from unused email lists immediately
- Create rules to filter emails into designated folders
- Audit notification settings on all apps/platforms
- Restrict incoming emails to urgent items only
Step 3: What communication expectations should you set?
Establish formal email quality standards:
- Document required email qualities using this guide as template
- Define when to email vs. text, call, or meet
- Host workshops with practice exercises and live feedback
- Leverage conformity effect for natural adoption
Step 4: How do you refine and improve continuously?
Ongoing maintenance ensures lasting improvement. Use EmailAnalytics to measure adoption and provide corrective feedback when standards slip.
What tools help measure email value?
EmailAnalytics provides:
- Objective measurement of email habits
- Time tracking for reading and writing
- Response time analysis
- Workload distribution insights
- Conversation thread metrics
Combined with clear standards and ongoing refinement, these tools transform organizational email efficiency.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is email value?
Email value is an email’s ability to influence change – whether literal (announcing new rules), emotional (relieving uncertainty), or practical (providing necessary information) – relative to the time invested in writing and reading it.
How many emails are sent globally each day?
Approximately 289 billion emails are sent daily worldwide, with 200 billion (69%) being spam or marketing emails that provide little to no value for most recipients.
What are the biggest email value detractors?
Major value detractors include: marketing spam, unnecessary notifications, redundant emails, improper CC/BCC usage, ambiguous content, inappropriate length, and incoherent organization or semantics.
Why is the average email’s value so low?
Three main factors: (1) Workers receive no formal email training, (2) Companies don’t establish or enforce email rules, and (3) People don’t realize how much time inefficient emails waste.
How can I measure email effectiveness?
Use tools like EmailAnalytics to track metrics including total volume, response times, thread sizes, time spent reading/writing, and traffic patterns without reading individual messages.
What makes an email coherent?
Coherent emails have three qualities: (1) Clear organization with strong subject lines and structured content, (2) Proper semantics with clean, error-free writing, and (3) Scannability through bullets, bold text, and visual hierarchy.
How long should emails be?
Email length should match purpose – long enough to include necessary details but short enough to respect readers’ time. Avoid both ambiguous brevity and unnecessary verbosity.
What’s the best way to reduce email spam?
Unsubscribe from unused lists, create filtering rules for automated emails, adjust app notification settings to urgent-only, and use folder organization to manage necessary but non-urgent emails.
How do you improve organizational email efficiency?
Set clear communication expectations, document email quality standards, provide training workshops, monitor usage with analytics tools, and give ongoing feedback when standards aren’t met.
Can email value actually be measured objectively?
While no single metric captures email value perfectly, you can measure efficiency indicators like time spent, response rates, and communication clarity. EmailAnalytics provides these insights to help optimize email practices.
Related Resources
Jayson is a long-time columnist for Forbes, Entrepreneur, BusinessInsider, Inc.com, and various other major media publications, where he has authored over 1,000 articles since 2012, covering technology, marketing, and entrepreneurship. He keynoted the 2013 MarketingProfs University, and won the “Entrepreneur Blogger of the Year” award in 2015 from the Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs. In 2010, he founded a marketing agency that appeared on the Inc. 5000 before selling it in January of 2019, and he is now the CEO of EmailAnalytics.
