Study: Business Executives Turn To Email Newsletters First For Their News

Social media might be the shiniest tool in your marketing kit, but if you want to reach business leaders don’t neglect old-school tactics.

That’s the main lesson to be learned from a recent study that found that executives use email newsletters — remember those? — as their primary source for news. Sixty percent said newsletters were one of the first three news sources they check every day. That’s twice as many as those who open a mobile news app (28%) and significantly higher than the 43% who look for news on the mobile web via browser or a social media app. Twitter (23%), Facebook (19%) and LinkedIn (12%) lagged behind.

The study, prepared by the Quartz marketing team, pulled insights from 940 executives across a range of industries, including management consulting, finance, tech and media and advertising.
The pool was balanced across age demographics with 22% in the 25-44 range, 22% 35-44, 21% 45-54, 20% 55-64 and 12% 65 and older so the results shouldn’t be written off as an you-can’t-teach-an-old-dog-new-tricks outlier.

Quartz found a very mobile-device oriented group, with 50% of respondents using mobile devices to take the survey. And they also read most of their news on mobile devices with 61% saying most of their news consumption is on mobile (41% on phones, 20% on tablets).

More interesting findings:

• <75% spend at least 30 minutes a day catching up with news. And 44% say they focus most highly on news first thing in the morning.
• 61% subscribe to newspapers and magazines, but only 3% use print as a primary news source.
• 37% of executives pay for digital news, with those in the finance industry being most likely to subscribe at 47%.
• 91% say they share work-related content with colleagues.
• When they share, 31% say use mobile devices (31% phone, 16% tablet) and 48% a desktop computer.
• 80% say they share interesting content via email, 43% via Twitter, 30% via Facebook and LinkedIn, 22% in person and 18% via IM or chat.

Justin Ellis of Nieman Journalism Lab has a very good analysis of the study here. Click here for the full report from Quartz.

About The Author

Martin Beck

Martin Beck was Third Door Media's Social Media Reporter from March 2014 through December 2015.