Remember using the original Yahoo Mail inbox? Probably not, if you’re a Millennial or Gen Z, but it was definitely one of the most iconic early internet experiences of the 1990s and 2000s – one that I fondly remember with a deep sense of nostalgia. It wasn’t long before I stopped using Yahoo Mail somewhere in the mid-2010s, migrating to Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Outlook apps. I felt sad for Yahoo’s decline, in the intervening years; but that’s all I felt – sad – before losing track of Yahoo altogether.
So imagine my surprise when Yahoo’s team reached out to me last week for a demo on their new Yahoo Mail app – an email service that I had stopped using over half a decade ago. What could they possibly have to show off?
“When Yahoo Mail was first introduced 25 years ago, users didn’t have the same quantum of digital information coming at them like today,” said Josh Jacobson, SVP and GM of Yahoo Communications. Evolving user needs, new consumer trends and technology are all coming together to create diverse, first-time use cases for how email can serve new generations of users, he further emphasized.
Most consumer engagement within personal email accounts is with shopping messages (50% of opens) and messages from businesses (people-to-people communication is just 7% of opens). This is especially true with younger users, according to Josh Jacobson: 46% of Gen Z users cite discounts and shopping as primary motivation for new email sign ups (-2x that of other users).
There are roughly 4.1 billion users of email globally, and usage remains high even amongst younger consumers (90% in the 15-24 age group). The Yahoo Mail users are decently engaged, according to Yahoo – half of Yahoo Mail users open the app at least three times a week and over 20% visit over 26 days a month. But the question is why? What do they get in Yahoo Mail that they aren’t potentially served elsewhere?
“Our teams have received a lot of feedback, we've done surveys and talked to both existing users and potential users like yourself and understood that when people are running their personal lives they run what we call the business of life. Buying things online, coordinating with others, and exchanging information. And so essentially what we've created is a suite of tools within Yahoo Mail that help people stay organized and on top of what matters,” Josh said.
According to Shiv Shankar, Product Lead at Yahoo, the new Yahoo Mail app is all about reducing the unwanted noise in your inbox, helping you focus on the important signals in a refreshed new look that isn’t just a fresh coat of paint – it’s intuitive and aims to solve key user problems.
Believe it or not, but users love to have so many things stored in their email app, adding to the signal to noise ratio in Shankar’s view. “How can we help users find the things they're looking for in a simple and easy way, and that's how we introduced the new navigation row on top. With just one tap, you can see all the attached email files in one place, without having to search or do anything more than just clicking on the tab. This helps reduce user’s inbox anxiety and makes them feel more organized,” Shankar added.
Apart from the new and improved ‘Top-of-Inbox Navigation’ feature with contextual filters designed to drive awareness and findability for what matters most to Yahoo Mail users, there are two more new features added to the email app. ‘Group by Sender’ feature allows you to ‘group’ emails by domain to quickly find important messages, deals, or delete all messages from a sender at once in a single click. ‘Receipts View’ feature lets you see receipts from all orders at once, to easily track your purchase history.
Additionally, Yahoo said the new mail app also comes with features like free trial tracker, where Yahoo Mail users (who sign up for a free trial service online) are notified three days before the free trial is about to expire so that users can make a conscious decision, seemingly a feature that no other free email app offers. This is how Yahoo’s helping users to stay on top of stuff that really matters to them.
What’s more, Shiv Shankar confirmed that there are plans to allow more configurability and customization options to Yahoo Mail app users in the near future, especially with respect to the pinned tabs in the top navigation bar of the app. For example, instead of a ‘Travel’ tab I’ll be able to customize a ‘Newsletter’ tab, just to have quick access to all my newsletter emails. I’m imagining this customization feature to be an advanced filter when it finally launches, the timeline of which Yahoo didn’t comment on at the time of my interview with Josh and Shiv.
Of course, the biggest reason to start using the Yahoo Mail app is the free 1TB inbox it offers – no one offers that much storage for every email inbox, not even Gmail or Outlook. Free Yahoo Mail users will see ads in their inbox, whereas Yahoo Mail Plus subscribers (the Pro inbox service) lets you remove all ads entirely, if needed. Entrance to Yahoo Mail is free – which is amazing – and then people can choose what's the right experience for them if they want to pay as they go later or stay free for life, either is fine with Yahoo.
As a returning Yahoo user, I’m more than happy to give their email app a second chance. Whether it ends up becoming my daily inbox, only time will tell. Have you given the new Yahoo Email app a try? What do you think about all the new features? Let us know in the comments below, and keep reading Digit.in for the latest tech news and gadget reviews.
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