Participatory Marketing Network research shows email is still a popular social app

NEW YORK, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- The Participatory Marketing Network (PMN), which helps marketers transition from push and permission marketing to participatory marketing, together with its research partner Pace University's Lubin School of Business' IDM Lab, today announced results from its third Gen Y behavior study. The survey looked at time spent and preference for visiting social networks, reading/writing email, texting, talking on the phone, watching TV, reading magazines and surfing the web (non social media sites). While Gen Y do indeed spend considerable time on social networks, when asked what they would least like to give up for one week, only nine percent said social networks while 26 percent said email and 26 percent said texting.

"These results may be surprising to some, but not if you consider the role email continues to play in the day-to-day lives of Gen Y," said Michael Della Penna, PMN co-founder and Executive Chairman. "As long as email remains the collection point for social networking updates, including alerts around new followers, discussion updates and friend requests, it will remain a powerful force in marketing and our lives."

Other notable findings from PMN's Gen Y research include:

• Email (26 percent) and text messaging (26 percent) are the activities least likely to be "given up for a week," followed by TV (15 percent), talking on phone (11 percent), visiting social networks (nine percent), reading magazines (seven percent) and visiting non social network sites (six percent).
• Average time spent on social networks per month is 33 hours, compared to 31 hours for email. A difference of two hours per month is unexpectedly small given the disparate media coverage given to Facebook and other social networks.
• Texting remains an important communications tool for Gen Y with the average number of text messages per month exceeding 740.
• Gen Y spend more time emailing, texting and social networking online than talking on the phone, watching TV or reading magazines.
• Interest in mobile marketing remains low among Gen Y, with only one in five now receiving targeted promotional messages and only four percent planning to do so in the future.
  

The study, conducted in October 2009, included 203 panel members (consumers between the ages of 18-24).

The Participatory Marketing Network partners with Pace University's Lubin School of Business' Interactive & Direct Marketing Lab to provide its members with exclusive access to a Generation Y panel for ongoing research initiatives. Members can design and execute proprietary quantitative and qualitative research in conjunction with the PMN to better understand and market to this powerful consumer segment. The broad definition of Generation Y includes more than 70 million Americans born between 1977 and 2002. For more information about the Participatory Marketing Network, to inquire about membership, or for more information about the Generation Y and Social Networks study, please go to http://www.thepmn.org.

The Interactive & Direct Marketing (IDM) Lab at the Lubin School of Business (http://www.pace.edu/idmlab) at Pace University is a student-run direct and interactive marketing agency that works with its roster of clients on traditional interactive integrated marketing situations and new media solutions. It is a formal practicum, headed by its founder Professor of Marketing Harvey Markovitz (hmarkovitz@pace.edu), who has been a direct marketing professional since 1968 holding an MS in Interactive Marketing (NYU) and by Professor of Marketing Vishal Lala, Ph.D. (vlala@pace.edu), who is an expert in data base marketing, consumer response modeling and consumer behavior.

SOURCE The Participatory Marketing Network

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