Shaun Nestor

In a recent email, Jay Baer says, “email ain’t dead yet.”

When they wake up, 59% of consumers check their email account before anything else online, according to new research from ExactTarget, in a sweeping survey of 400+ Americans.

This correlates well with a similar, but far less statistically rigorous poll I conducted one year ago asking Twitter users what they checked first in the morning, and email was preferred by 77%.

The full ExactTarget research is available for free here, and includes several other interesting discoveries:

• People who check email first tend to be motivated to interact with brands online for the sake of deals (why you need a deal before you’ve even had coffee, I’m not sure)
• People who check Facebook first (11% of total respondents) tend to become fans of brands for entertainment purposes, or to show support (the concept of social badging).
• 39% of the people that check email first still use Facebook daily, but their motivation for doing so remains deal-centric.