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June 27, 2004

And the email battle rages on...

Looks like a three way email Dragrace is now in full force. Do something pioneering, unique and attention-grabbing and you won't be alone for long. As noted before, Yahoo quickly copied Gmail's free storage play with their own. Well, now Hotmail has jumped on the megastorage bandwagon with what some think of it's own "gratuitous" offering. Now things get really interesting. Of course, controversy and suspicion immediately arose with Microsoft in the game, to the point of buzz that Hotmail was blocking Gmail invites (including a post from me on the subject). Talk about a SPAM filter. But it turned out not to be true - we tested it. All that said, the all the PR buzz and heat still seem to be in Gmail's favor. Frogbody has a very nice summary of what they did right in marketing Gmail. Covered all the bases, from product offering, to positioning, to targeting. (And hey, it was a great way to generate noise in what is supposed to be a quiet period.) But one key thing seemed to make all the difference. Scarcity. As noted by MediaPost, By Invitation Only added prestige, cache and a sense of preciousness that verged on lunacy. Everyone wants a Gmail beta account. Why? For one thing, the chance to have first (or at least early) crack at getting a cool name. I know that was a key thing for me. Also, it got very cool to be able to give them as little "Aren't I cool?" gifts. This notion reached it's peak in my POV with the launch of Gmail for troops that takes donations of email accounts and sends them over there. Click here for even more wacky reasons people are frothing to get a Gmail account. There is a contrary view. For one thing. They haven't made it oparticularly easy for users of the competition to switch(makes me think of how important “help for 123 users” inside Excel during the spreadsheet dragraces), although we did find this nice little guide. Given that Gmail is still in beta and Hotmail and Yahoo are not, is Gmail missing the boat? Are they going to have their thunder stolen? Who knows? But the good thing about dragraces is they are fun to watch. And this one has clearly changed the shape of the email playingfield permanently.

Posted by johnza at June 27, 2004 09:52 PM

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