My.com Study on Email Usage Shows 90% of Internet Users "Compulsively" Check Email

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(Marketwired - Jul 15, 2014) - A study of consumer email behavior released today by My.com reveals email is more prevalent than ever in our lives, and still growing. The study found that 90% of email users admit to checking their email "compulsively" -- behavior that includes checking email first thing in the morning, last thing at night, during meals and even during conversations. The report also revealed that email is here to stay, with an expected 27% increase (from 3.9 billion to 4.9 billion accounts) in email accounts worldwide expected in 2014.

The study was led by My.com, developers of myMail, a free mobile email client with an intuitive UI that lets users manage all their email accounts including Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com, Hotmail, MSN and @my.com. My.com conducted the survey of 1,000 American internet users of varying demographics in April 2014 to help further understand the role mobile email plays in consumers' lives.

The study's key findings on email use include:

• Internet users spend more time on email than ever. 46% of internet users spend an hour or more per day simply reading emails.
• Email users depend on mobile email. With 70% of email users checking email on their mobile device, consumers rely on email to stay connected to conversations and information. What's more, 67% of Internet users want to know about new messages the moment they hit the inbox, so they turn on push notifications.
• For today's email user, there is no bad time to check email. 74% of respondents check email first thing in the morning, 48% check during lunch, 27% check during dinner and an astounding 56% check as a last thing before bedtime. 8% admit to checking "after sex." Respondents also overwhelming admit to checking email during other activities such as during concerts and movies.
• Email users are spread across several accounts. Only 33% of respondents have a single email account, and 27% of internet users have 3 or more accounts.
• Spam is still a huge problem. Despite advances in spam-fighting technology, 60% of survey respondents admit to having lost important messages due to spam. And an astonishing 64% admitted to having closed an email account altogether due to frustration with excessive spam.
• Email behavior can be obsessive. 27% of survey respondents claim to have "lost sleep" over stress related to email.
• Push notifications are underused. While 67% of mobile email users enable push notifications, only 54% adjust them. Adjustments to when and from whom notifications are received can help consumers respond to important emails and leave the rest for later.

"We are seeing this paradox where people use email, but don't feel that it meets their modern, mobile needs," says Dmitry Grishin, Co-founder and CEO of Mail.Ru Group. "To make email better, we needed to move beyond the stale iteration tied to traditional desktops, and go mobile-first and mobile-only. myMail and @my.com can only be accessed from a smartphone or tablet. No password. This is the future of email, as told by everyday email users."

For more information on the study or for access to an infographic depicting these and other data points, visit http://blog.my.com/an-open-email-to-email/.

About My.com
My.com is a subsidiary of Mail.Ru Group, one of the largest Internet companies in the world with an audience of more than 100 million users (comScore, September 2013). Mail.Ru is publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: MAIL) (listed since November 5, 2010).

My.com is building an integrated communication and entertainment platform, dubbed 'Communitainment,' beginning with a family of mobile services and games. My.com's mobile communications apps -- myMail and myChat -- provide multiple email account management and messaging, and myGames is a growing collection of mobile and PC game experiences.