Hi Galya,

We are constantly asked this same question and it seems that scant up-to-date information is available. The best recent study I found can be seen here on Clickz’s website, see link below. Please bear in mind that this is a study carried out in the US (as are most), so AOL numbers will be higher than those seen in the UK.

http://www.clickz.com/resources/email_reference/technology_services/article.php/1428551An older and smaller sample of users can be seen here. I did ask Dr. Wilson if he planned an update on this study, but no news so far:http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/email-client-summary.htmHope this helps,David GoddenKeymail Marketing Ltd020 8940 8123

Hi Galya,

With full-service clients including Tesco, Marks & Spencer, and Intelligent Finance we often get asked this. Unfortunately there is no 3rd party audited survey of email client usage. In addition, there is no market share study of email client usage. There are, every once in a while, measures of sales of corporate email server usage (Exchange, Notes, etc.) but no measure of how many people are using which client with these servers.

So, other than surveys where we ask our audience which client they use as part of our mailing, there is no way to know. Think of the value of such a report: who cares other than email marketers? For the cost to do it right, there is a very limited audience who wants to buy it. Note that there are very few reports of "browser share" anymore these days as well, and that is even easier to track.

Note that there is also no technical way to know. Email clients do not tell us their "user agent" when viewing or clicking a link; you may know that browsers do reveal such useful information.

Yes, if clients require we can run a "poll" or more preferred, a survey... but there is cost involved.

But most importantly, is this of major concern? That is, one should be coding to meet the needs of the major clients, because there are really only a few. It’s not hard to test html on any of them, nor is it too hard to use best practices which create mails which look good on all.

Some companies such as e-Dialog have worked for years to optimize this process, but over time, we expect others to be able to evolve their creative as well.

Primary Email Clients:
Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail/Other web clients (though these are different enough
that each could be considered a client)
Outlook Express
Outlook
Eudora
Thunderbird/Netscape/Firefox-derivates
Lotus Notes

There are certainly others (theBat on windows, multiple IMAP readers under Linux or Unix, etc.) and there are platform issues (Macs are becoming more and more prevalent with their own issues) but if your mail renders well on these clients, you have the vast majority of email readers out there.

Hope that helps.

Best wishes

Peter
____________________________________
:: Peter Duffy | Business Development Director
:: e-Dialog UK Ltd | pduffy@e-dialog.com
:: 77 Oxford Street | London W1D 2ES
:: direct: 020 7659 2716 | f: 020 7659 2100 | m: 07802 498 336
:: www.e-dialog.com

On a related note, does anyone know of a service that provides competitor intelligence for email? I cam across this service: http://www.email-tracker.co.uk and was wondering if it was unique.

Thanks
Mike Williams

I'd love to find out more , email me at

In answer to your question, email tracker will look to capture the email marketing communication being broadcast by a company's competitors whether an IPT client or not