If your email open rates are down, perhaps it’s not so much you – it’s them – that is, all those other marketers vying for a reader’s attention.

Email marketing is cheap and has been generally quite effective. Marketers will flock to anything cheap that produces results because it just makes good sense to.

But in a “tragedy of the commons” type scenario, the use/abuse of this resource by many motivated by only their own self-interest can degrade it for all.

According to Blue Kangaroo online survey of more than 1,000 US adults, 43% stated over half of the new emails in their inbox the week prior to the survey came from marketers – and that includes newsletters. 7% claimed 80% of their email were marketing blurbs.

8 in 10 respondents estimated more than 20% of their new emails came from marketers.

As such, it’s not surprising the number of folks who feel they are getting too many marketing communications was also rather high. 30% said they spent half an hour or more reading marketing communications each week.

42% of respondents open and read most of the marketing emails they receive according to the survey, but 70% feel that inbox clutter might be contributing to them missing deals of interest.

The good news is most people want to hear about deals related to their shopping interests – 93% had some level of interest and 65% indicated a “high” or “very high” level of interest.

So, how do you stand out among the masses? An important flag to the reader with regard to the potential of an email being open-worthy is of course the subject line. Crafting email subject lines is part science, part art, part magic – and sometimes a healthy dose of luck.

I also noticed a question in the survey that relates to a comment I made about penalties for spammers yesterday.

The question was: “Persistent spammers are very hard to catch, but in an ideal world, what punishment would they deserve?”

65% said the spammers’ should be permanently blocked from accessing the Internet and 8% wanted to see some of their typing fingers lopped off.

I can certainly understand the latter.

Read the full Blue Kangaroo Survey on Marketing Emails results.