According to this study, 8 out of 10 marketing emails are ignored.

Every day, the French receive massive volumes of emails, to the point of transforming their inbox into a veritable overflowing space.

While this channel has historically remained at the heart of marketing strategies, a recent study sheds light on a more nuanced reality. Indeed, the majority of messages sent by brands no longer capture attention. A trend that directly challenges current digital marketing practices…

An overflowing inbox that dilutes attention

According to a study conducted by Notify, 1.4 billion emails are sent every day in France. And yet, 80% of marketing emails are never read. This figure illustrates a growing form of digital fatigue.

This saturation is reflected in actual usage, where 36.5% of French people report having more than 500 unread emails in their main inbox. Conversely, only 21.2% manage to keep their inbox empty.

Faced with this pressure, behaviors remain passive, with 38.5% of users immediately deleting promotional emails, while 34.6% prefer to simply ignore them and let them accumulate.

For its part, unsubscribing remains marginal, with only 19.2% of French people taking this step.

These habits reveal digital fatigue

Beyond the volume, it is also the daily management of emails that raises concerns.

While some users spend less than two minutes a day on it, others spend more than ten minutes, a significant amount of time over the course of a year. Email inbox cleaning also remains infrequent, with more than half of French people sorting their emails very rarely, or never. This gradual accumulation contributes to a feeling of information overload. This situation also has a direct impact on users' feelings, as nearly two out of three French people report feeling stressed by the number of unread emails. This data highlights that the issue extends far beyond the technical realm to encompass user experience…

Towards a Reassessment of Marketing Strategies?

For brands, these figures reflect a paradigm shift, because simply increasing the number of emails sent no longer guarantees visibility and can even have the opposite effect by damaging the relationship with consumers.

The study highlights a strategic challenge, moving from a volume-based approach to a relevance-based approach. In practice, this means better targeting of messages, choosing the right time to send them, and offering genuinely useful content.

In addition to marketing performance, this evolution is also part of a broader discussion around digital sustainability, as each email sent generates a carbon footprint. In other words, the quality of campaigns must take precedence over their quantity. Given these observations, email remains a powerful tool, but its effectiveness now relies on a more refined approach, focused on users' attention and real expectations…