What Is in-Place Email Analytics in Email Archiving and Why Is It Important

A typical person sends and receives over 120 emails each day, implying that a modest company of 100 people will handle around 12,000 emails daily.  In total, there were over 4 billion active email users in 2020 who collectively sent and received 300 billion emails per day. With the mass usage of email, it is one of the most important data sources for organizations to capture and manage.

A slow server and the difficulty preparing for any prospective eDiscovery demands along with inadequate email records for litigation or other legal concerns, and the difficulty in obtaining crucial email communications if they have been mistakenly deleted are a few of the challenges that come with a large volume of unmanaged emails. But by far, the biggest challenges that an organization faces with emails are with compliance and analytics.

Compliance Regulations

Many electronically stored information (ESI), including emails, contain some sort of sensitive business records and personally identifiable information (PII) that, depending on the industry, might require a certain degree of control and retention. Common compliance regulations requiring specific treatment for emails are the GDPR and CCPA that sees a work email address as personal data since it contains the employee's name, job title, company address work phone number, etc., and mandates safeguarding it. Some industry-specific regulations, such as HIPPA, outline the standards to secure individuals' medical records and other personal health information, including electronic health care transactions via email. Another industry-specific regulation, SEC 17a-4 compliance, mandates broker-dealers in the financial services industry to retain and index electronic correspondences, including email, with immediate accessibility for two years and with non-immediate access for at least six years. 

Email Management and eDiscovery

Even if these regulations do not apply to your organization, some degree of email control is required as emails play a vital role during an internal investigation or eDiscovery request. For starters, companies need to collect information in response to a legal department, attorney, or tax inspector's request. Responding to these requests must be quick and smooth, therefore requiring discovering and analyzing the contents faster. Moreover, companies are often engaged in audits and internal investigations, which require them to identify and process relevant data at hand using computerized search.

All these regulatory and legal requirements may seem daunting at first, but there are ways to manage emails compliantly without the hassle. To start with, companies move their emails from the local servers to an archive to ensure better anti-tampering, prevent data loss, and for faster and better backup. Some industries that are required to monitor user behavior use built-in auditing to maintain audit trails, avoid email manipulation, and make the data readily searchable. These email governance steps make eDiscovery much more convenient when all emails are searchable using one platform, based on their content and metadata, including attachments, and displayed in their original format.

Email Management and Analysis

The good news is that once email governance is established, organizations can leverage that control beyond risk mitigation to find hidden insights with business analytics.

Customer Retention and Acquisition

Since emails are such a standard mode of communication, they may be utilized to learn what makes a client happy, what makes them upset, what prompts their exit, and, most importantly, what makes them choose your firm over a competitor. This data brushed up with targeted campaigns is a well-known marketing tactic used for faster and better customer retention and acquisition.

Targeted Campaigns

Companies use their emails to monitor consumer behavior and convert it into a pattern using current and future trends to induce brand loyalty. For example, eCommerce companies use this data to customize buying experiences by offering suggestions based on various criteria, including prior purchases, goods purchased by other customers, browsing activity, and many others.

Identifying Potential Risks

Emails play a vital role in identifying insider trading or for internal or external root cause analysis (RCA), where the conversations and contacts need to be analyzed to understand what happened to avoid risks in the future. Additionally, email analysis can also be used to determine which system was attached by the virus and can be used to prevent such troubles. 

Supplier Networks and Products

Companies frequently plan their customers' expectations with the help of consumer insights by preparing their own requirements from suppliers in terms of products and services. This is a strategy that allows businesses to regulate customer demand and supply.

Increase Employee Satisfaction

Employees are an essential element of any company, and email analytics may help understand how they behave. For example, the analytics may be utilized to improve training programs and enhance employee morale by adding a coffee station on every level or giving out gift cards instead of awards. As a result, when used correctly, email analytics may help in employee retention and improve satisfaction.

Today, a life without emails is unthinkable, as is the future that mismanaged emails may bring us. Several businesses have recognized the value of having well-managed emails in the future and have already implemented improved information governance approaches to meet their business management and analytics demands. Whatever the industry and the ultimate goals and needs, an email archiving software must have an in-house email management solution as well as powerful searching and filtering features for the companies' eDiscovery and compliance software needs.