Email automation is expanding to the point that only 13 percent of global email traffic is written by humans, according to an analysis by online growth platform Hostinger.
The report, based on one billion emails processed during the month of January, has revealed that more than half (56%) of messages do not reach the recipients’ inbox as they are blocked as suspicious or malicious.
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“Email has quietly become an infrastructure, with most of its traffic already automated,” said Hostinger Engineering Manager Edgaras Lukosevicius.
Among the 44 percent of messages that passed security filters, the company has detected 22 percent from business tools and SaaS, 20 percent from personal email providers, 16 percent from marketing platforms and newsletters, 15 percent from social networks and 10 percent from low-volume senders. The rest of the emails are distributed between ‘eCommerce’, financial services, media, employment and travel.
However, of all the above categories, only personal mail providers and low-volume senders involve human intervention. Both account for 30 percent of the emails received, which would be equivalent to 13 percent of the total traffic, with the remaining 87 percent being automated emails, according to Hostinger.
Regarding the 56 percent of emails that do not reach the recipients, the main reasons why they were blocked are ‘phishing’, ‘malware’ and ‘bot networks’, with 34 percent; suspicious marketing, with 22 percent; and domain configuration problems, with 11 percent.
Consequences for companies
Faced with this panorama, companies face the challenge of maintaining a saturated communication channel, with pressures on deliverability and with a weakened value of traditional metrics.
From Hostinger they explain that a drop in ‘engagement’ occurs when the user perceives the ’email’ as a mailbox in which notifications, promotions and alerts do not stop arriving, which can even generate rejection when interacting with them.
Regarding the deterioration of deliverability, the Hostinger report indicates that 34 percent of rejected emails are due to a “bad sender reputation.”
Regarding the loss of measurement capacity, indicators such as ‘clicks’ or ‘interaction with the message’ lose their value as a ‘real metric’ of the interaction. “Companies continue to optimize metrics that no longer reflect the reality of the channel. The question is not whether the user opens the email, but whether they still want to receive it,” Lukosevicius stressed.
Faced with these problems, Hostinger has aimed at a more intelligent management model, supported by AI-based solutions to reduce noise, prioritize messages and improve processes such as advanced filtering, tray cleaning, alias management or mass cancellation of subscriptions.