The Problem With Email

Is there a link between less spam and superior business performance?

What's the problem with email?

Email is… many things to many people, but for business, it is a critical correspondence, file transfer and notification service. For companies of all sizes, email generated from outside the corporation represents 68% of all email messages.

Email is consistently recognized as the most important communications service affecting job performance in all manner of organizations, all manner of industries and all manner of roles: 50% more important than mobile voice services; 2 times more important than desktop telephone service; 10 times more important than faxmail. This simple, robust and flexible computer and network application has managed over the course of two and a half decades to really change the way business gets done.

With all of that said, email as a mainstay of business has plenty of room for improvement. This Brockmann & Company study of nearly 500 business people shows that although email is very important to virtually all, it is not a very satisfying experience.

Among the top two factors most often cited as needing improvement – mobile email services and greater spam control – only better spam control affects both the desktop and the mobile user experience. This report investigates the link between business performance levels and the costs and benefits of better spam control. This report also introduces the ‘Spam Index,’ a simple proprietary method for measuring improvement in spam control systems, or comparing spam control performance with peers and competitors in industry. In this report we also draw a link between the achievement of lower spam levels and higher business performance.