Big, brawny behemoth: Google’s Gmail email service reaches 900 million active users.

It’s been several years since Google gave us an official report on Gmail’s user base.

But now we have a new announcement from one of Google’s senior vice presidents, reporting that Google’s Gmail service has now reached a new milestone of 900 million active users.

Three years ago — the last time Google commented officially on the Gmail active user base — the company had reported ~425 million users.

… Which means that in the past three years alone, Gmail’s active user base has more than doubled — and doubled from an already strong baseline figure.

In fact, Gmail had already become the most popular email service in America by 2012.

Despite the fact that most other email services have failed to report newer stats since then, it’s a safe bet that Google remains King of the Hill when it comes to the number of active users of its Gmail email service.

[Related to this, the same Google spokesperson is also reporting that three out of four active Gmail service users are accessing their accounts on mobile devices. I’m sure this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone.]

The continued robust growth in Gmail users may explain why Google hasn’t been making significant changes to the service or the user interface. Any service that’s the largest one out there can’t risk irritating or alienating large swaths of its users.

Indeed, even when an email service isn’t the biggest or most important one in the market, making changes can still be a risky move. Just recall the howls of protest from users (and even some of Yahoo’s own employees) when Yahoo made sweeping changes to its e-mail service about 18 months ago.

No doubt, Yahoo has lost a certain number of subscribers who simply couldn’t abide the changes.

In Google’s case, what it’s doing is using Inbox, which Gmail users see on top of the Gmail platform, as an area to experiment with new email features and such — without upsetting satisfied Gmail users who may have little appetite for those changes.

Inbox is an email app by Google for Android and iOS, along with web browsers Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. In a hint at things to come, Google has now made Inbox open to all users.

Google claims that its Gmail and Inbox services serve different functions and needs, and that it will continue to work on enhancements and updates for both.

But it’s pretty clear that Inbox is where the bulk of Google’s developmental effort and energy are being directed these days.

Google’s Instant Search: Instant Irritation?

September 22, 2010 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Advertising, Bing, Business, Communications, Google, Google Instant Search, Instant Search, Mapquest, marketing communications, MSN, News, Nones, Nones Notes, NonesNotes, Onelin Marketing, Online, Online Advertising, Online Communications, Online Search, Pandora, Phillip Nones, Search, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Search Marketing, SEM, SEO, SEO/SEM, Technology, Thoughts, Ticketmaster, Trends

How many of you have been noodling around with Google’s new Instant Search functionality since its unveiling earlier this month? I’ve spent the better part of a week working with it, trying hard to keep a “completely open mind” as to its benefits.

I’ve finally came to the conclusion that … I can’t stand it. I’m a pretty fast typist, and generally know what I’m searching for. I really don’t need Google “pre-anticipating” search results for me, and find the constantly jumping search results window extremely off-putting to the point of distraction.

I gave Instant Search a full week … and couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve now elected to turn it off completely.

Wondering if I was the only one with this view … it certainly didn’t take long to find out that there are a great many people out there who feel the same way. You can use Google search (either the “instant” or “traditional” will do fine) to find any number of blog posts and user comments about Google Instant Search that are just one notch shy of mutinous — and hardly genteel in their choice of language. (A few examples can be found here and here and here.)

If the comments by disgruntled users are to be believed, Bing/MSN may find itself with a nice little bump in search volume market share by the end of September.

And if that actually happens, Google Instant might die a quiet death – which wouldn’t be the first time Google laid an egg in its “throw-everything-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks” approach to product development.

But if Google Instant does gain traction … there are some negative implications for search marketers as well. Many companies seek to structure their online marketing campaigns by determining the optimal amount of spending on search advertising, display ads and social media. The key to success in this endeavor is undertaking a process that examines the millions of cookies and billions of clicks that are made by web users, along with factoring in other elements like geographic location and time of day.

All of this information is weighed against the cost of various ads and the likelihood of success as they are served to the user. That’s determined by running regular models of millions of keywords and word combinations, judging the relative costs to determine the optimum frequency. For some of the most aggressive marketers, these models are run once or twice daily.

The advent of Google’s Instant Search scrambles all of that, because it makes the process even faster and more hectic than before. As those of you who have experimented with Instant Search know, you start seeing “suggested” search results with just the first one or two keystrokes … and those choices continue to change with each new keystroke made or movement of the cursor down the list of Google’s suggestions. For marketers, the result is a lot more velocity on the ad side – and more price changes.

As proof of this, within the first few days of Instant Search’s launch, sites that Instant Search recommends after the first one or two letters are typed into the search box – “Mapquest,” “Ticketmaster” and “Pandora” are three useful examples – were experiencing significant increases in traffic, whereas their hapless competitors were not.

If that’s what is happening with the big boys, where does this put smaller businesses? The answer is obvious: They’re going to get squeezed big-time … and as a result, their search advertising costs are going nowhere but up.

Mighty sporting of you, Google.

Updating the Marketing “4 Ps”

September 1, 2010September 1, 2010 Phillip Nones Uncategorized 4 Cs, 4 Cs of Marketing, 4 Digital Marketing Ps, 4 Ps, 4 Ps of Marketing, Business, Communication, Communications, Connection, Consumer, Content, Convenience, Conversion, Cost, Digital Communications, Dunay, Four Cs, Four Ps, Google, Jennifer Howard, Lauterborn, marketing, Marketing 4 Cs, Marketing 4 Ps, Moment of Truth, News, Nones, Nones Notes, NonesNotes, Online, Online Communications, Online Marketing, Pace, Participation, Paul Dunay, Performance, Phillip Nones, Place, Precision, Price, Procter & Gamble, Product, Promotion, Pulse, Thoughts, University of North Carolina, Zero Moment of Truth, ZMOT

In business, we like our checklists and concise bullet points. It’s all part of our impulse to distill ideas and principles down to their essence … and to promote economy and efficiency in whatever we do.

In marketing and communications, it’s no different. Most everyone who’s studied business in school knows about the “4 Ps” of marketing: Product, Place, Price, and Promotion.

Today, that listing seems woefully incomplete and inadequate – even quaint. Stepping in to fill the void are additional attributes that have been proffered by marketing specialists. Several of these newer lists — one coined by Robert Lauterborn, a professor of advertising at the University of North Carolina, and another from technology marketing specialist Paul Dunay — consist of a group of marketing “Cs”: Consumer, Cost, Convenience, Content, Connection, Communication, and Conversion.

But I like a new group of “Ps” as popularized by Jennifer Howard of Google’s B-to-B market group. She offers up five new “Ps” of digital marketing, and they go a long way toward filling the yawning gaps in the original list.

These new digital marketing attributes are Pulse, Pace, Precision, Performance, and Participation.

Beyond the fact that fair dues should be given to anyone who manages to come up with an additional set of five new attributes that likewise begin with the letter “P,” they happen to be worthwhile additions to the original list, and they help bring it into the interactive era.

The new set of marketing “Ps” can be further described like this:

 Pulse – active listening and attention to customer, brand and competitor insights.

 Pace – the speed at which marketing campaigns are carried out is critical. “Slow and steady” usually doesn’t cut it.

 Precision – assuring that marketing messages are delivered to the right customers … at the right time … and place (e.g., PC or mobile device).

 Participation – creating conversations with customers via rich media ad formats and social media platforms to enable them to “join the conversation.”

 Performance – meeting expectations for results that notch ever higher, via measurable and accountable marketing and media tactics.

In the world of digital marketing and e-commerce, marketers like to borrow a term from the realm of traditional retailing. It’s the “moment of truth,” and it was first coined by Procter & Gamble executives to describe those critical 10 to 20 seconds when someone is standing in a store aisle and making decisions on what to purchase and what to pass by.

In the online world, Google refers to this phenomenon as the “zero moment of truth” (ZMOT) – when a potential buyer interfaces with a brand or a product on a computer, smartphone or other digital device. Why zero? Because instead of 10 or 20 seconds, many people take only a split second to decide whether they’ll stay and engage … or whether to ditch and switch.

How the B-to-B Sales Process is Changing

August 15, 2010September 1, 2010 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Adam Needles, B-to-B, B-to-B Communications, B-to-B Sales, Blogosphere, Blogs, Business, Business-to-Business, Business-to-Business Communications, Business-to-Business Sales, CBD, Colman Brohan Davis, Commercial Marketing, Commercial Sales, Communications, Digital Marketing, Direct Mail, Direct Marketing, e-Marketing, e-Research for Marketing, E-RM, Industrial Marketing, Industrial Sales, marketing communications, Media, News, Nones, Nones Notes, NonesNotes, Offline Communications, Online Communications, Phillip Nones, Sales, Silverpop, Technology, Thoughts, Twitter

In my 20+ years in industrial, commercial and other non-consumer marketing communications, I’ve witnessed more than a few “big trends” affecting the nature of the selling process in the business realm.

One of the biggest of these is the approach that customers take when evaluating products and services they might be interested in purchasing. Recent research findings about these behaviors has been published that sheds more interesting light on where things are at the moment.

A survey of ~300 B-to-B managers was conducted in late 2009 by e-Research for Marketing (E-RM) for Colman Brohan Davis, a Chicago-based marketing organization. This survey, which was limited to respondents age 35 or younger, found that only a few of the 13 tools used to research products and services represented “traditional media” – print-based resources, trade shows, or consulting with industry colleagues by phone or in person.

Furthermore, the study found that even these four tactics are losing their importance compared to the use of online social networks, which were exploding in usage.

These survey results reminded me of a comment made by Adam Needles, director of B-to-B field marketing at Silverpop, an e-mail marketing company based in Atlanta. “Somewhere around age 30 to 35, you can draw a line in the sand between people who are used to calling around to get everything and [where it’s been] all about relationships face-to-face.”

In contrast, Needles has this to say about younger staffers who conduct a great deal of the buying cycle online: “You have people whose expectation is that companies should put everything on their web sites; they should be getting real-time feeds and information, and companies should be totally integrated into … the blogosphere.”

Younger staffers tend to be influencers more than decision-makers. But this is not to diminish their importance, as they are the ones charged with conducting the research and drafting investigative report summaries and preliminary recommendations. Ferreting out information through resources like webinars and social platforms such as Twitter and blog posts, while it may seem exotic and less consequential to older colleagues, is not at all foreign to these staffers.

And we shouldn’t forget that today’s “influencer” at a company is very likely tomorrow’s “decision-maker.”

Which gets us back to the ER-M study. One big takeaway from that research was that customers are looking into all the corners of offine and online communications to find the information they feel they need to make risk-averse and “CYA” decisions that are also the successful ones that pay off well – hence building their reputations inside their company.

Tactics like direct mail marketing may seem old-hat or even quaint, but they can still be quite effective, while e-mail marketing, while fast and cheap, elicits resistance from some because they feel inundated with marketing materials that are irrelevant to their needs.

I guess it’s yet more challenging news for already-fractured marketing communications program tactics that continue to be under tight budget constraints.

What’s the very latest on e-mail open rates?

June 20, 2010 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Business, Clickthrough Rates, Communications, Conversion Rates, Direct Mail, Direct Marketing, Direct Marketing Association, DMA, E-Mail Conversion, E-Mail Marketing, eMail Conversion, eMail Marketing, marketing, marketing communications, News Thoughts, Nones, Nones Notes, NonesNotes, Online Communications, Online Marketing, Outbound Telemarketing, Phillip Nones, Response Rate Trend Report, Response Rates, Technology, Telemarketing

Here’s an interesting factoid to consider: there were an average of 247 billion e-mail messages deployed each day during 2009.

With the plethora of commercial e-mail communications – accompanied by groaning inboxes and all – it’s only natural to wonder if what’s happening to the ones you send correlates to the experience of others.

The Direct Marketing Association helps answer that question with the results of a survey it just completed. The DMA’s 2010 Response Rate Trend Report, conducted with ~475 respondents in March and April, is the group’s seventh annual survey. It found that average open rate for e-mails sent to a company’s “house” e-mail database list is just under 20%, while the clickthrough rate from the e-mail to a web landing page is ~6.5%.

And the average “conversion” rate – taking whatever additional action is desired – is ~1.7%.

[Those figures are for “home-grown” e-mail databases. The percentages would be lower when working with outside/purchased lists.]

How does e-mail performance compare to response rates encountered in direct mail marketing pieces? The DMA research studied that, too. These days, direct mail response rates are running about 3.5% for house lists … but less than half of that (~1.4%) for outside prospect lists.

Commenting on the survey findings, Yuri Wurmser, the DMA’s research manager, said, “Traditional channels are holding their own in terms of response, but it is a multi-channel market out there where everyone is using a lot of different channels,”

Amen to that.

The DMA survey also found – not surprisingly – that while response rates for B-to-B campaigns tend to be higher than consumer campaigns, e-mail tactics are used less often for direct sales compared to postal mail. Which goes to show that despite their added costs and longer lead times, traditional direct mail marketing techniques still have a role to play in the marketing mix.

And what about telemarketing? The DMA survey reveals that outbound telemarketing to prospects provides the highest response rates — around 6% — but also the highest cost-per-lead at more than $300.

A full report is available for a fee from the DMA, and can be ordered here.

Social Media: The Newest Addiction?

May 24, 2010 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Addict, Addiction, Communications, Demographics, Demography, Facebook, Interactive, Interactive Communications, Internet, Internet Addiction, marketing, Media, News, Nones, Nones Notes, NonesNotes, Online Addiction, Online Communications, Phillip Nones, Retrevo, Retrevo Gadgetology, Social Media, Social Media Addiction, Technology, Thoughts, Twitter, Web, Web 2.0

With the burgeoning popularity of social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter, some observers are beginning to wonder if a new type of addiction is now in our midst.

So-called “Internet addiction disorder” came to the fore in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with social scientists contending that some people were neglecting their interpersonal relationships, and instead were spending hours of time online every day.

Of course, since social media is about interrelationships, perhaps likening it to the solitary pursuit of web surfing might not be an apt comparison. But a recent study demonstrates that social media, too, appears to have addictive aspects.

The online consumer electronics shopping and review site Retrevo commissioned an independent study of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers distributed across age, income, gender and geography. Guess what? The study revealed that many people appear to be obsessed with their social media circles all throughout the day … and also checking in throughout night.

About half of the respondents reported that they check Facebook or Twitter feeds just before going to bed, during the night, or as soon as they wake up. Nearly one in five admitted checking in with these sites “any time I wake up” during the night.

It’s not a huge surprise to learn that owners of iPhones are more involved with social media; they use Facebook and Twitter more often and in more places.

Moreover, nearly one in five respondents actually view these two social sites as their most important sources for the news they consume, rather than Internet news sites, TV/cable programming, the radio or the daily newspaper.

As a truer measure of “addiction,” the study’s respondents were asked to estimate how long they could go without checking in on Facebook and Twitter. While about four in ten reported they could avoid checking in over “a long time,” a similar percentage indicated they could not make it any longer than five or six hours at a stretch without checking in on these sites. (The balance felt they would need to check in at least once a day.)

And how about tolerating electronic messages that interrupt their activities? Half of respondents under the age of 25 in the Retrevo study didn’t mind being interrupted during a meal. One-fourth don’t mind the interruption happening on the job or during a meeting. And a die-hard 10% don’t even mind an interruption during – you guessed it – lovemaking.

As for how respondents over age 25 answered these same questions, they’re only about half as tolerant, so it’s easy to see how the propensity for social media addiction might manifest itself more with the younger set.

Since the online social media revolution is a relatively new phenomenon, one might wonder if the attraction of social media bordering on addiction is just a passing fad in part because of its novelty.

That might be true. But it’s difficult to see exactly how behaviors and attitudes will change dramatically over time. After all, television viewing was extremely high when TVs first came out … and those numbers stayed high for decades thereafter. Social scientists started making rumbles about the phenomenon of TV addiction early on … leading some people to refer to television sets as the “idiot box” or “boob tube.”

And actually, with social media the temptation for “total immersion” is even stronger. After all, the TV viewing public was forced to watch whatever programming went out over the airwaves. But in social media, the content is whatever the participants choose it to be – and it’s interactive to boot.

Surprising Findings about Smartphone Apps

September 10, 2009September 10, 2009 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Apple iPhone, Business, Compete, Internet, iPhone, News, Nones, Nones Notes, NonesNotes, Online Communications, Phillip Nones, Pinch Media, Smart Phones, Smartphones, Technology, Thoughts, Weather Channel

iPhone With the explosive adoption rate of Apple’s iPhone smartphone since its release a little over a year ago – more than 25 million phones to date – it couldn’t be long before researchers would start examining user behavior and study the most popular applications that are being used.

Indeed, there are already hundreds of “for free” and “for fee” applications that are available for use on smartphones.

So what are most popular iPhone apps? You’re to be forgiven if you think of music or games, because that’s certainly where most of the press hype has been. But in fact, the most popular iPhone apps are all about … the weather.

That is right. In a recent report issued by online market research and analytics firm Compete, staid and unexciting weather apps were cited by ~40% of respondents as one of the three top iPhone apps they used.

The next most popular application cited? Facebook (by ~25%). By contrast, game applications were cited as a top three-category by only ~20% of respondents, and music apps even lower still.

So much for iPhone users demonstrating cutting-edge online behavior!

In a related analysis, online analytics firm Pinch Media found that most iPhone apps aren’t setting the world on fire in terms of their popularity. The Pinch analysis found that iPhone users are quite fickle: Only ~20% ever return to a free app after downloading it. And a month later? The return rate drops to a paltry 5%. (The percentages are even lower for paid apps.)

These stats have implications for third-party advertisers on smartphone app programs. For many, it may make more sense to advertise on The Weather Channel or other less flashy but more frequently used apps than going with high-sizzle gaming applications that might be used only a handful of times before they’re replaced by the “next new thing.”