11 Interesting Facts About Email you Probably Didn’t Know
Table of contents
Emails today are the backbone of all business and professional communication. It’s ingrained deeply in our daily lives. Looking for a job? Email the recruiter. Need customer support on a recent purchase? Email the company. Want to sell something? Email your target customers. Look, I can go on and on. But the point is, we can’t do without emails. It’s still the best way to get in touch with people across the world. Not to mention, you need an email for pretty much any website or app you sign up for.
You could even go so far as to say, your email is your digital persona. Email’s been around for some 50 odd years and in this time there have been some interesting developments and stories about them. Let’s look at 11 of the most interesting facts about emails that you probably didn’t know!
Table of Contents
11 Interesting Facts About Email You Didn’t Know
#1 When was the first email ever sent?
The first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson, in 1971, marking the beginning of what would become an indispensable tool in our digital lives. He sent the email to himself. And you’d be underwhelmed to find that all he wrote was – “QWERTYUIOP”, the first row of letters on a keyboard.
#2 How often do people check emails on average?
The average person checks their email 15 times a day!
#3 How many emails does the average person have?
No it’s not 1. Did you know the average person has 1.8 accounts? How many email accounts do you have?
#4 What are the chances of emails being opened after 24 hours?
Email marketers this one’s for you. If your email hasn’t been opened in the first 24 hours of being sent, there’s only a 1 percent chance of it being opened at all! In fact, the open rate drops to 5 percent after just 4 hours.
#5 How many emails are sent per day across the world?
Take a wild guess. Now add a couple zeroes at the end. In 2022, 333.2 billion emails were sent out daily!
#6 Who is the largest Email Service Provider (ESP) today?
Back in the day it seemed like everybody had an email on Yahoo. But as of right now, Gmail is the largest Email Service Provider in the world with over 1 billion accounts. Outlook takes second place with over 400 million users. Outlook got a great deal of their users when they picked up all of the Hotmail accounts when they took over in 2013.
#7 Who gets the most spam in the world?
It’s Bill Gates and he receives upwards of 4 million spam emails a day! So if you’re frustrated by the number of spam mails you get everyday…at least you’re not Bill Gates.
#8 While we’re on the subject of spam, who was the first person to send spam mails?
His name is Gary Thuerk. Gary sent the first ever spam mail after lunch on May 3, 1978. That’s when it all began. He was working for Digital Equipment Corp. and sent the spam mail to 397 email accounts on the ARPAnet of the United States Defense Department.
#9 What device do you check emails on?
In the United States, 66% of all emails are read on mobile devices. And in case you were wondering, the most popular device for email opens is the iPhone.
#10 Who was the 1st US President to use email?
It was Bill Clinton in 1993. And he famously only ever sent two emails. One of them was a test mail and the other was to astronaut John Glenn who was on the Space Shuttle in orbit.
#11 Is it email or e-mail?
Most people still don’t know the correct form for writing the word ‘email’. Is it email, e-mail or even eMail?Technically both email and e-mail are right. Since it’s short for electronic mail, the term ‘e-mail’ was first the preferred version, but as the usage spread, most people switched to the unhyphenated ‘email’. The Associated Press Stylebook, the style guide for most newspapers in the United States, also decided to drop the hyphen in 2011.
Final Word
Those were the most interesting email facts that we know of. Email will continue to be a major part of our personal and professional lives on a daily basis. If you work with emails, say in a role like sales or customer support or human resources, managing incoming emails can get quite stressful. Some emails might slip through the cracks and get missed. In such cases, it’s recommended that you opt for an email management tool. Tools like Hiver power your Gmail into an efficient, simple-to-use email management tool to make sure you never miss an important email. Try Hiver for free and see for yourself.
