Man holding a laptop while standing next to a woman smiling, they both look at the laptop and check email validation.

Email Day? Yes!
Here's why

Did you know that more than half of the world's population uses email? By 2025, there will be over 4.73 billion email users around the world.

That may not be too surprising when you consider that email is the essential component of our online lives. We use email for just about everything! Signing up on social media and streaming services, getting purchase confirmations, receiving a favorite newsletter, or staying in touch with our loved ones.

Marketing and sales? Email is a revenue-driving force for millions of companies. Personal, business, serious, lighthearted – email is all of that and it keeps everyone connected.

Man smiling while checking his email on his mobile phone, side image shows a preview of his inbox.

Why we’re starting Email Day

As true email junkies, we feel that email deserves a special day. Although it connects billions of us around the world, email has never had a proper holiday – until now.

On April 23, we’d like to invite the world to think of email and all the tremendous possibilities it has created for us through the past five decades.

Why is Email Day April 23?

April 23 is the birthday of Ray Tomlinson, the computer programmer who invented email in 1971. We couldn’t think of a better way to honor his memory.

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What’s the purpose of Email Day?

We started Email Day to celebrate this channel we love so much. On top of that, Email Day aims to raise awareness around the misuse of email and to promote email best practices.

Here are some of the things we do at ZeroBounce to make email better. We invite you to be a part of these initiatives, whether you use email for business or just hang out in your inbox a lot.

Man smiling with images of his email surrounds him, the SPAM box is checked and his email is from AOL.

1. On Email Day, let’s make email safer

As widely used as it is, email still presents vulnerabilities that companies like ours set to address and repair. To give you an idea of the state of email today:

  • 45.1 percent of email traffic is spam (Statista, March 2021).
  • More than three billion spoofing emails are sent every day (Valimail study).

We're dedicating ourselves to preventing these malicious creators and perpetrators of spam from the harm they cause. Individuals, businesses and even government agencies have felt the full brunt of cybercriminals.

Companies like ZeroBounce help you:

Man sitting at a desk smiling while using ZeroBounce’s email validation on his mobile phone.

2. Let’s make email more dependable

Legitimate senders who act in good faith can sometimes be mistaken for spammers. The economic impact of good emails landing in spam is substantial. But in certain industries, not arriving in the inbox can have more severe consequences.

With the rise of telemedicine in the past years, healthcare and pharmacy supply companies rely on email for critical communication. For patients, there are greater ramifications to an email landing in the spam folder. They range from frustration to more costly and risky repercussions.

ZeroBounce’s overarching goal is to allow a more dependable and consistent email communication for both senders and receivers. Our tools work hand in hand to accomplish this goal – day in and day out.

Woman sitting at a desk smiling and looking at her laptop using ZeroBounce Catch all emails to increase her email ROI.

3. Let’s increase email ROI

Nine out of 10 marketers use email to distribute their content and 81 percent of small businesses say email is their primary customer acquisition and retention channel (Oberlo).
Also, did you know that the average email ROI is $42 for every $1 spent?

However, every day:

  • 31 billion emails bounce (BetterBounces.net).
  • 21 percent of all emails land in spam (ReturnPath).

Every email that doesn’t reach the inbox is a lost opportunity. And while deliverability is a puzzle with many pieces, maintaining data quality is at the core of landing in people’s inboxes.

ZeroBounce helps with that – and more. Its email optimization tools enable companies to achieve a higher email ROI and build more profitable businesses.

Looking for a resource to help you land more emails in the inbox? Make sure to read our email deliverability guide.

Man in a thinking position with his hand under his chin, and the image of the forest next to him.

4. Let’s reduce our impact on the environment

Sending an email requires only 1.7 percent of the energy it takes to deliver a paper letter (Science Focus study). But while email is more eco-friendly, it does have an impact on the environment.

The footprint of an email varies. BBC states that it ranges from 0.3 grams of CO2 for a spam email to 50 grams of CO2 for an email with images (like most companies send). It adds up when you consider that the total number of email users worldwide is 4.1 billion.

In its years of existence, ZeroBounce has detected billions of fake, invalid and bot-created email addresses. We guide you to communicate only with genuine, active users and help reduce the negative impact that unnecessary emails have on the planet.

A black and white photo of Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of email.

Tomlinson was “the original Google,”
his daughters say

ZeroBounce reached out to Ray Tomlinson’s daughter, Suzanne Tomlinson Schaffer, to ask her more about the man who gave us email. “It’s pretty cool!” she said when she first heard about Email Day.

“Dad was very well respected in his field, not just for email, but for all of his accomplishments,” Suzanne told us. “He didn’t think of creating email as a challenge, I think he was prouder of some of the other things he did,” she added.

What kind of person was Ray Tomlinson?

“He was warm, and kind hearted,” Suzanne describes him. “His coworkers appreciated his open-door policy and his willingness to let people bounce ideas off of him.”

At home, “he was an infinitely patient tutor and so knowledgeable you could ask him anything and he would have an answer for you. My sister likes to refer to him as the original Google.”

An MIT graduate, Ray Tomlinson ranks number four on the MIT list of top 150 innovators. He passed away in 2016, at the age of 74.

Email Day FAQS

Email Day is an international holiday that celebrates the most popular application in the world, email. The holiday was started by email validation and deliverability company ZeroBounce in 2022.

Email Day is every year on April 23, the birthday of Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of email.

Ray Tomlinson, an American computer programmer, sent the first email in late 1971. Tomlinson created the @ sign to send a message from one computer to another one sitting beside it.

The first email was “entirely forgettable,” as Ray Tomlinson was merely testing the application. The engineer didn’t preserve the content of the email and couldn’t remember it.

You can observe Email Day by writing about it, posting on social media and inviting others to join the celebration. Use the hashtag #EmailDay.

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