This quick-read draws on analysis we have carried out on email activity data before and after the government's announcement of lock down on 23 March 2020 to give insight into how we might optimise our communication channels in the current remote-working environment.

• Total email activity has increased by 28% following the transition to working remotely*
• People are reading 31% more emails than before
• Generic emails increased more than bespoke interactions

“Chief data officers play a pivotal role in enabling data-driven decision making that will help their organizations respond to COVID-19 and emerge from the crisis in a position of strength.*”

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How has COVID-19 changed our email behaviour?

It is now well over a month since governments across the US, Europe and the UK began putting social distancing and lockdown measures in place to restrict the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been an unsettled and worrying time as we have attempted to predict the impact of Coronavirus on our lives and livelihoods, as well as the long-term repercussions on our businesses and economies. No-one (aside from perhaps Bill Gates) had predicted that the next “structural break” would come in the form of a universal and sudden humanitarian and economic crisis of this scale.

However, while we are all still left guessing as to how the impact of the virus will play out, proactive leaders are already taking stock and assessing the learnings we can take from this crisis to progress and thrive in tomorrow’s business environment. The last month has demonstrated that, thanks to the digital communication channels we now take for granted, B2B businesses can continue to work from home relatively undisrupted. However, one fact which has been brought into the spotlight is the increasing importance of data in guiding our decisions, both from a health perspective, but also how it can refine and improve our working lives. The heated discussions taking place about why NHS data differs from ONS data and which figures we should be using to make decisions about the next steps in tackling the virus has demonstrated this point very clearly; it has emphasised the importance of using an accurate, complete and impartial dataset to guide a smart decision-making process.

Using data to drive smart decisions

Moving forward to the learnings enterprises can take from the COVID-19 pandemic and progressing into the “new normal”, we have seen an increased demand from our clients to use the unstructured data generated by their communication channels to drive smart decision making. Building on this theme, FeedStock has carried out analysis of email behaviour across the financial services sector following the transition to working from home which COVID-19 has brought about. We have compared the 2 weeks before and after the lockdown was announced on the 23 March 2020, with the same period in 2019. The aim of this analysis is not so much to confirm or refute aspects of our email activity which we suspect have been impacted by the change to our working situations; but primarily to demonstrate how using data to inform our long and short-term business activities can lead to improved decision making throughout the enterprise.

Analysis of email activity change across the financial services industry due to COVID-19

Unsurprisingly, there has been a marked increase in email events following the shift to working remotely on 23 March 2020. In the week immediately following the Prime Minister’s announcement that the UK would be going into lockdown, email activity was 28% higher compared to the same period in 2019.*

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