Q: Are resort guests with Gmail addresses younger than those using AOL emails?

Last week we looked at how many people in resort databases are using various email providers like Yahoo!, Gmail, or AOL. A long list of follow up questions quickly arose but, rather than spread them out with a few other topics, we couldn’t help ourselves and decided to answer one of the most intriguing this week by look at age. Are Gmail users younger than people with AOL.com addresses? Here’s what we found out.

The Goods
For this analysis, we again looked at over 600,000 email addresses where we also knew the owner’s age. Instead of running the numbers for the full line-up of domains, we stuck to the top five: Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, and Comcast. We found the average age of each group and plotted it on the chart below:

First off, our suspicions were correct that Gmail users were younger than AOL users. What surprised us, however, was that Comcast users were even older – 10 years older, in fact, averaging 45.3 years compared to Gmail’s 35.6. To put exact numbers with the rest, Hotmail’s average age was 37.5, Yahoo 39.1, and AOL 44.0.

What This Means
There are a few interesting takeaways from this, but at the core is a simple, yet intriguing idea that ties data to email marketing. That idea is simply what you can know about someone from just their email address.

While it would be great if every new lead came along with a full spread of demographic insight, this doesn’t always happen. Using basic trends and averages like something as simple as their email domain can help begin to paint a more detailed picture of who they are without transactions.

4, 3, 2, 1…
We’ll release another simple resort marketing insight like this one next week. Want it waiting in your inbox on Tuesday morning? Stick your email address below.