Recent figures released by comScore show that while Google’s Gmail has grown the most during the past year, Yahoo! Mail still maintains a tight grip on the e-mail service provider market.
Yahoo! Mail claimed 106.2 million unique visitors in the U.S. in July, or 67.8 percent of all 156.6 million e-mail users that month, according to comScore Media Metrix. This reflected 22 percent year-over-year growth.
Windows Live Hotmail was second with 47.1 million unique visitors in July, or 30.1 percent of the total market, reflecting 3 percent year-over-year growth.
Google Gmail was third on the list with 37.0 million unique visitors in July, or 23.6 percent of the total available users during the month. Gmail grew 46 percent from the same month last year, the fastest percent change of all e-mail service providers.
AOL was fourth with 36.4 million unique visitors, or 23.3 percent of the total available e-mail users in July. This reflected a loss of 19 percent of its user base from July of 2008.
Comcast.net WebMail (7.9 million), AIM Mail (5.8 million), ATT WebMail (2.8 million), Verizon WebMail (2.3 million), RoadRunner WebMail (1.9 million) and IncrediMail.com (1.4 million) rounded out the list of the top 10 e-mail service providers in July.
“Of course, it doesn’t hurt that you need a Gmail account to use any of the other myriad of services that Google offers (please don’t tell the folks over at the European Commission because there may be some trouble with that one considering it makes sense and creates more business for Google),” wrote Frank Reed at the Marketing Pilgrim. “It also doesn’t hurt that the storage limits on Gmail accounts are quite generous.”
Kalia Krayewski at ISEdb.com notes that Gmail has “upped the ante through very cool e-mail innovations.”
“Some of its innovations have been more useful: the ability for friends to leave voicemails in your inbox, massive amounts of storage space (currently at 2757 megabytes per user…approximately), mobile access, excellent spam filters, free POP and IMAP access to all Gmail users, faster speed, and the ability to tag e-mails thus making searching through them a far less mundane task,” she wrote.
Gmail seems poised to continue its rise, while Yahoo! and Microsoft will have to push the innovation envelope if they want to remain ahead.
For marketers, Gmail’s ballooning popularity could spell trouble for e-mail campaigns. Return Path recently revealed that Gmail inboxes were the toughest to get into, with 23 percent of e-mail messages sent to these addresses going undelivered during the first half of this year.
Hotmail and MSN had nondelivery rates of 20 percent each, while Yahoo! has a nondelivery rate of 15 percent.
Sources:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10311150-265.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/14/gmail-nudges-past-aol-email-in-the-us-to-take-no-3-spot/
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/08/gmail-now-third-largest-email-service-in-us.html
http://isedb.com/db/articles/2120/1/Gmail-Now-Number-Three-Web-Mail-Service-in-the-US/Page1.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-yahoo-needs-to-worry-about-gmail-and-fix-yahoo-mail-now-2009-8
http://www.dmconfidential.com/blogs/column/Marketing/2365/
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