An annual review of the internet has revealed the huge return on investment received by those using email marketing.

Companies using email marketing receive an average of $44.25 (£28) for every dollar they spend on the platform, according to figures released by pingdom.com.

The survey revealed that there are now 3.146 billion email accounts open worldwide, despite there only being 2.2 billion internet users and that the average email user receives 112 messages a day.

Out of these 112 emails, around 80 will be spam. One email out of every 256 sent last year was malicious.

These figures, which show a huge rise in email use over the last year, demonstrate just how important it is for email marketers to design a message which is immediately eye-catching for consumers.

Companies which improve at doing this could even build on the 4425 per cent profit they might be receiving on their email marketing investment.

According to a report on the survey from cnet.com, Microsoft Outlook remained the most popular email client, with 27 per cent of the market, whilst Hotmail was the most popular email service in the world with 360 million users last year.

With the amount of internet users expected to grow from the current estimate of 2.2 billion, the chances are that more emails will be sent in 2012 than ever before.