Earlier this school year, I sat in a class listening to the professor talk about how she no longer emails students because "young adults don't read emails anymore." Uh, we don't? As obnoxious as it is to be told what "we" collectively do and do not do by a 60-something professor, it was also a completely false statement. I live and breath email, and without it, I would be at a loss for communicating with my far-away family members, distant friends, classmates, and even roommates (so, so convenient for rent reminders) — not to mention the endless amount of email newsletters and business updates that keep me in the loop.

Text messaging still reigns supreme when it comes to convenient communication, but when so many teens have email-synced cell phones, it only makes sense to choose the email avenue because, unlike texting, there are no added costs, no tricky plans, no limits. I subscribe to email lists of all my favorite stores (catalog shopping 2.0) and genuinely enjoy receiving messages about new designers, products and sales. I don't think of them as "junk mail," just friendly encouragements to spend a little bit of time shopping.

Media Post, reg. required, collaborated with Ball State to research different niche groups of young adults to see the differences between their media consumption and marketing preferences. Teens are still in high school, college students are between 18 and 24, wired are young professionals, and young homemakers are those between 18 and 34 who consider "homemaking" as their primary profession (Whoa. I wonder how many girls they found that fit this criteria?). Here's what they found:

Teens are 25% less likely than other groups we identified to have made a purchase online. It makes sense since they are less likely to have disposable income available. They are, as we hear often, less likely (than average) to be influenced by email and more likely (than average) to be influenced by text messaging to make a purchase. In terms of driving conversions, email outperforms the influence of text messaging, social networks, and IM combined.

College students are buying online, but they don’t credit direct marketing with having any influence on that activity. In fact, 27% claim direct marketing has never influenced a purchase decision. As such, no channel looks great for marketing to college students when compared to the average. In contrast with teens, however, they have very low opinions of any marketing via text messaging or through social networks.

Wired consumers have good-paying jobs and no kids, which means they have disposable income. They are the largest media consumers identified in our study, spending an average of more than eight hours a day on their computers accessing the Internet, email, and using computer software — including games. They use every channel available to communicate with friends and family — they call, they text, they Twitter, they IM, they use Facebook (Sound familiar yet? Most of us fall in this group).

Young homemakers are also well-versed in new communication channels. They text, they use social networks, and they IM. But more than any other group, they don’t want marketers bugging them through these channels. They have two channels open for marketers: direct mail and email.

Categorized under: Education, Mobile, Movies & Music, Web, Youth Marketing

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