Research email marketing specialist Emailvision found that only one in 10 women open and read their digital newsletters compared to one in five men.
The findings also showed that in the past 12 months more women (17%) than men (7%) had cancelled subscriptions to digital newsletters.
Women cited cluttered inboxes as the main reason for opting out, while men found that content simply wasn't relevant enough.
However, nine out of 10 said they wanted to receive more personalised newsletters from their favourite brands incorporating individually tailored information. The more popular ones were tailored with at least a name and contained relevant discounts or offers.
Nick Gold, UK managing director of Emailvision, said: "Consumers are spending much more cautiously in light of the recession and so brands must be smarter in the way they manage customer relations.
"Personalised content is the key to more targeted interaction, and will not only help build trust between customer and brand, but also improve the opportunities to cross-sell products or services."
As a result of the findings Emailvision has outlined some basic steps to getting it right with gender targeting in email marketing. These include: knowing the gender of your database; creating female and male versions of emails with relevant product lines for each gender; and creating an option to swap to a different version if the gender of the recipient is not known.