About this report
This report shows the current state of the email client market. It serves as the largest ever study of its kind, with data from almost three million email recipients. To run an analysis like this on your own mailing list, look at the Fingerprint service.

Business Data collected from 982,873 email recipients using the Fingerprint analysis tool. The mailing list owners classified their mailing list as mainly business users. This chart shows the top 10 email clients by market share. Compiled 11 September 2008 (revised 15 September 2008).

Consumer Data collected from 1,963,046 email recipients using the Fingerprint analysis tool. The mailing list owners classified their mailing list as mainly consumer users. This chart shows the top 10 email clients by market share. Compiled 11 September 2008 (revised 15 September 2008).

Caveats
Email clients are recorded when images are loaded within an email. Some email clients block external images, or are not capable of displaying HTML email. That includes non-current models of Blackberry, and other mobile devices unable to view HTML email. As a result these are not tracked and do not appear in the report.
 
Further to that, the report only shows the top 10 email clients we have detected. In total Litmus can detect over 3,000 different clients. Because of this diversity Litmus recommends analysing your own mailing lists to gain the most accurate information, since results can vary greatly depending on your lists' demographics.

Microcontent is your pearls of clarity in your subject line.  You only get less than 30 characters to explain your "macrocontent" in your subject line. Unless the subject line make it absolutely clear what the email is about, users will never open it.

• Clearly explain what the article (or email) is about in terms that relate to the user. Microcontent should be an ultra-short abstract of its associated macrocontent.
• Written in plain language: no puns, no "cute" or "clever" headlines.
• No teasers that try to entice people to click to find out what the story is about. Users have been burned too often on the Web to have time to wait for a page to download unless they have clear expectations for what they will get. In print, curiosity can get people to turn the page or start reading an article. Online, it's simply too painful for people to do so.
• Skip leading articles like "the" and "a" in email subjects and page titles (but do include them in headlines that are embedded within a page). Shorter microcontent is more scannable, and since lists are often alphabetized, you don't want your content to be listed under "T" in a confused mess with many other pages starting with "the".
• Make the first word an important, information-carrying one. Results in better position in alphabetized lists and facilitates scanning. For example, start with the name of the company, person, or concept discussed in an article.
• Do not make all page titles start with the same word: they will be hard to differentiate when scanning a list. Move common markers toward the end of the line.
• In email you send, make the "From" field clarify the customer relationship and reduce the appearance of spam or anonymous intrusion (but don't use the name of the staff member sending the email. unless the user has actually established a relationship with that person: mail from unknown people also has a tendency to be deleted).

Email newsletters feel personal because they arrive in your inbox; you have an ongoing relationship with them. In contrast, websites are things you glance at when you need to get something done or find the answer to a specific question.  The positive emotional aspect of email newsletters is that they can create much more of a bond between user and company than a website can.

A predictable publication frequency that is not too aggressive is usually best, except for newsletters that report breaking news. Not only are users more likely to sign up for newsletters that feel less intimidating, but a regular publication schedule lets users know when to look for the newsletter and reduces the probability that it will be deleted because it is confused with spam.

Email newsletters continue to be one of the most important ways to communicate with customers on the Internet. Newsletters build relationships with users, and also offer users an added social benefit in that they can forward relevant newsletters to friends and colleagues. Still, users are highly critical of newsletters that waste their time, and often ignore or delete newsletters that have insufficient usability.