• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, June 16, 2017

If you were to say you had the keys to a channel through which nearly one in two Millennials made three or more purchases over the past three months, you'd probably bite my hand off. The guys from the social department would wonder what part of Facebook I'm talking about, and the mobile fans would suggest a couple of shopping apps. The thing is -- the magic channel is actually email.

Overall, two in three consumers have made a purchase in the past three months that was prompted by receiving a brand email. You'd imagine this was bumped up by older demographics but the truth is, it's being bumped up by Millennials.

There is a crucial thing to understand here, in the Yes Lifecycle Marketing figures. It comes in a separate statistic that a little over one in three email users has a second account they use for email marketing. Their main account is for them, the second account is for money-off offers and branded announcements. Now, the figure of one in three nearly doubles with Millennials to 58%, whereas it's only 26% for Baby Boomers.

So Millennials are the main dual-inbox users. You would imagine that a separate account might be a block between a brand and its messages being received, however, nearly two in three check that email inbox regularly, even though it's only been set aside for branded messages. This is actually higher than the one in two who check their sole email account regularly for branded messages.

So, millennials are creating an inbox devoted to email marketing but, crucially, they don't ignore that address, they just have it so their work or personal email address doesn't fill up with branded messages. In fact, rather than being ignored, it's checked regularly.

The good news, then, is that millennials are very open to being influenced by email marketing. They're actively making the decision to syphon messages off to an inbox they can check when the time is right, and half are making at least a purchase a month through those branded messages.

It's a handy insight to have, should anyone from another part of the marketing team suggest that email is dying because it's clogging up inboxes and the young would never use the channel their parents order slippers through.

Quite to the contrary, email is being tidied up, particularly by millennials, so messages from their trusted brands are in one place, ready to be acted on. Millennials are not unsubscribing, they're not avoiding email, they're just making it work better for them, on their terms.