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Estimationstandard
How many emails are sent in the US every day?
How to approach it
Separate personal, work and automated emails. Automated messages such as receipts and marketing likely outnumber the ones people write.
How a strong answer opens
“I'll separate personal, work and automated emails. My guess is that receipts, alerts and marketing outnumber the emails people actually write.”
Outline of a strong answer
Try answering out loud for a few minutes before you open this.
- Clarify: sent by US senders, including automated
- Estimate adults with email
- Personal emails per person per day
- Work emails per worker per day
- Automated and marketing emails per inbox per day
- Sum and sanity-check against inbox experience
Where this question usually goes wrong
Counting only emails people write themselves, which misses the automated mail that likely makes up most of the volume.
Learn the method
Top-down and bottom-up in Module 3, Estimation.
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