Emails automated to unprecedented levels, study reveals

Email automation has reached unprecedented heights, according to a new study from online growth platform Hostinger.

Emails silently become an infrastructure with the majority of its traffic now automated, the report states.

Based on an analysis of 1 billion emails processed over a month, the study found that only 13% of global email traffic is written by humans. The remaining 87% is generated automatically.

Hostinger's Engineering Manager Edgaras Lukosevicius explained that the majority of automated emails fall into different categories, including business tools and SaaS (22%), personal email providers (20%), marketing and newsletters (16%), social media (15%), and low-volume senders (10%).

Personal email providers and low-volume senders are the only categories that imply direct human intervention, accounting for 30% of received emails, which translates to 13% of total traffic.

Among the reasons for email blocking, phishing, malware, and bot networks were the top culprits, accounting for 34% of blocked messages. Suspicious marketing tactics were responsible for 22%, while domain configuration issues led to 11% of rejected emails.

The study highlights the challenges faced by businesses in maintaining a saturated communication channel with pressures on deliverability and traditional metrics losing value. Lukosevicius noted that when users perceive emails as mere notification boxes, it can lead to rejection and a decline in engagement.

He emphasized that companies are still optimizing metrics that no longer reflect reality, urging a shift from focusing on opens to measuring whether users want to continue receiving emails.