A brief analysis of NetEase Mail product research and growth operations

Email has become an important tool for communication between individuals and businesses. This article takes NetEase Email product as an example and conducts an in-depth analysis from four perspectives. I hope it will be helpful to you.

The analysis in this article mainly focuses on personal free mailboxes. Since data collection is difficult, some data statistics cover personal paid mailboxes and corporate mailboxes, so please pay attention to the distinction.

1. Overall analysis of personal mailbox

1. Market situation analysis

1) From a vertical perspective, China's personal email market is becoming more mature

According to iMedia Consulting data, the scale of personal email users in my country has maintained a steady growth since 2015, reaching 305 million in 2018, predicted to be 323 million in 2019, and expected to reach 342 million in 2020.

After experiencing rapid growth in user scale in the initial stage of development, China's personal email user market has matured and the growth rate of user scale has begun to slow down. Since 2016, the growth rate has remained between 6-7%. It is predicted that the scale of China's personal email users will maintain a slow and steady growth in the future.

2) From a horizontal perspective, QQ Mail and NetEase Mail dominate the domestic market

According to iResearch Index data, in April 2019, the monthly independent device coverage of QQ Mail on mobile terminals reached 114 million, far exceeding the 21 million of Mail Master, which ranked second; the monthly coverage of QQ Mail on PC terminals reached 241 million people, while 163 Mail and 126 Mail, which ranked second and third, covered 98 million and 44 million people respectively.

QQ Mail on mobile terminals has an absolute advantage with a market share of 72.1%, and Mail Master ranks second with 13.6%; QQ Mail on PC terminals has a market share of 51.9%, and NetEase Mail (163 Mail + 126 Mail + yeah.net Mail) ranks second with 32.0%.

(Note: ① QQ Mail, as a product of Tencent, is backed by the QQ chat tool and has a natural advantage in user resources. If data such as usage time and frequency can be obtained, multi-dimensional comparison can more accurately measure the market situation; ② The NetEase mailbox data here only includes 163 mailbox, 126 mailbox, and yeah.net mailbox, and personal paid mailboxes and corporate mailboxes are not included. It is not the same as the total number of NetEase mailbox users mentioned below)

2. Product value analysis

Everyday communication: Compared to other Internet products, email has unparalleled openness - anyone anywhere can send an email to another person to establish a connection.

Business communication: Although instant messaging tools can facilitate timely communication, a large number of business activities, especially more formal business communication activities and important business documents, are still conducted via email. When it comes to electronic information evidence with legal effect, some email service providers have further enhanced the legal effect of emails by cooperating with notary agencies.

Data storage: All email platforms provide a certain amount of storage space, either limited or unlimited. Data stored in the mailbox can be browsed and downloaded anywhere as long as there is internet access.

Email subscription: After the email account is bound to a third-party platform, you can subscribe to and receive information pushed by the platform, such as order information from e-commerce websites, content recommendation information from content platforms, billing information from financial platforms, etc.

Network identity: Whether talking about the entrance of Internet applications, platforms or ecosystems, all applications need a network identity. Common network identities include email, QQ number, WeChat account, Weibo account, mobile phone number, etc. Among them, email is the most important part of the current mainstream account system.

3. User needs analysis

1) Pay attention to privacy and security

In March 2018, Facebook, an internet social empire valued at $50 billion, had its user data of more than 50 million leaked; in August, 130 million personal information data of Huazhu Group were publicly sold on the dark web by hackers; in November, the personal information of up to 500 million people of Starwood Hotels & Resorts, a subsidiary of Marriott International, was leaked due to database problems.

In the past year, a large number of data leakage incidents have occurred frequently. The security attribute of email has become one of the attributes that users are most concerned about. Personal email has now become an important way to verify or retrieve passwords during the registration process of many Internet services. Personal email service providers need to ensure the security of the personal email usage environment.

2) Sending and receiving work emails is the primary purpose

According to iMedia Consulting data, sending and receiving work emails has become the biggest demand of users, accounting for 50.2%, followed by sending and receiving social emails, accounting for 27.8%. At work, emails have more formal standards and paradigms for displaying content and details, and are easier for users to archive. Personal emails have certain advantages in meeting users' work needs.

3) Storing files is an important requirement

According to iMedia Consulting data, 81.2% of users frequently use their personal email accounts to send and receive ordinary emails, followed by sending and receiving oversized attachments, accounting for 44.1%. Functions such as sending and receiving ordinary emails, sending and receiving oversized attachments, draft boxes and file transfer stations can meet users' needs for storing files. Personal email service providers need to continue to upgrade their attachment capacity and transmission speed.

4) Half of users reject advertising emails

According to iMedia Research data, nearly half of users hate advertising emails, accounting for 48.8%, and only 14.7% of users think advertising emails are useful. Email marketing needs to effectively identify user groups, deliver precise content in accordance with user preferences, and present advertising emails in a high-quality manner in order to achieve better marketing results, reduce the impact on user experience, and even meet the needs of some users.

2. Comparison of mainstream personal email products

1. Mainstream Email User Preferences

NetEase Mail has become the users' first choice platform, followed by QQ Mail.

Baidu Index data shows that among personal email platforms, NetEase email has the largest search volume, followed by QQ Mail, which has a very large gap with Sina Mail, 139 Mail, and Gmail. This to a certain extent reflects the user preferences and popularity of each email platform.

(Note: Online search is only one of the ways to enter the email platform, so it only reflects user preferences to a certain extent. The amount of search is also affected to a certain extent by the number and convenience of email entrances. Some email users will be diverted by client entrances, navigation entrances, etc.)

iiMedia Research data also shows that from 2015 to 2018, 71.3% of users expressed their preference for using NetEase Mail, followed by QQ Mail, which accounted for 68.1%, and then Sina Mail, which accounted for 23.0%.

With its first-mover advantage in the market, NetEase Mail has become the number one brand of Chinese email. QQ Mail relies on the social platform resources of QQ and WeChat to achieve a high user conversion rate, becoming an important force in the personal mailbox industry.

2. Mainstream email features

Understanding product features and extracting product selling points will allow for more targeted promotion.

1) NetEase Mail

NetEase Mail adopts a comprehensive scoring strategy and clustering fusion anti-spam system, which can effectively block text and image spam; it has multiple security measures to effectively protect account security; in addition, it also has barrier-free functions that allow visually impaired people to operate and read better.

2) QQ Mailbox

QQ Mail can set a personalized domain name to distinguish it from a private QQ account. It can also intelligently identify and translate foreign emails, aggregate advertising emails and subscription emails, and make it easier for users to read.

In addition, the drift bottle function is also a major feature of QQ Mail, which enhances the fun experience of original communication and makes it easier to spread products.

3. User reviews of mainstream email services

Pay attention to collecting user reviews and feedback, and compare them with competing products to confirm and consolidate the advantages of your own products and find and improve weaknesses.

1) Zhihu user reviews

NetEase mailbox:

Advantages:

• High security, strong anti-spam function, no advertising emails and spam (the personal free version may have some)
• Fast email sending and receiving speed
• Perfect search function, easy to find emails
• It has a long history and is widely recognized as more formal and suitable for business.

Disadvantages:

• Excessive commercialization. There are a lot of advertisements in the free version, such as various official advertisements (NetEase Games, NetEase Yanxuan, NetEase Lottery, Lima Finance, etc.) + a lot of spam, and there is also a NetEase signature advertisement at the end of the letter.
• Difficulty recovering a lost account
• The community function is not enough. In addition to sending and receiving emails, there are no more functions to retain users, and users do not have a sense of belonging.

QQ mailbox:

Advantages:

• Bind with Tencent system, convenient for collaboration with QQ and WeChat
• You can change the name, or use the foxmail suffix address as an alias
• Support free upload of large attachments
• The socialization is quite good. For example, you can see your friends' birthday reminders in your QQ mailbox, and the drift bottle can be used to make anonymous friends.
• It has many functions, including group email, greeting cards, drift bottles, etc.

Disadvantages:

• Too many features, too entertaining, not very formal
• Associated with a personal QQ number, often used to communicate with acquaintances and friends, not convenient for communicating with strangers
• There are many advertisements and spam emails
• Many foreign websites block QQ mailboxes

2) App Store user reviews

NetEase Mail Master:

• All versions rating: 4.8
• Advantages: easy to use, stable, supports multiple accounts, multi-platform synchronization, beautiful interface, fast speed
• Disadvantages: Not enough capacity, too many ads

QQ mailbox:

• All versions rating: 4
• Advantages: large space, beautiful interface, easy-to-use notepad function, no ads
• Disadvantages: The interface optimization is not perfect, and the official pushes too much irrelevant information
• Suggestion: I hope to continue to provide the drift bottle function

3. Introduction to NetEase Mailbox Products

1. Brand Introduction

1) NetEase has 8 email sub-brands

163 free post, 126 free post, yeah free post, 163VIP, 126VIP, 188 wealth post, professional corporate post, free corporate post

2) All mailbox brands are divided into 3 categories

Personal free mailbox: 163 free mail, 126 free mail, yeah free mail

Personal paid mailbox: 163VIP, 126VIP, 188 Wealth Mail

Corporate mailbox: professional corporate mailbox, free corporate mailbox

2. Development Chronicle

November 1997: NetEase successfully developed the first email system in China, after which many domestic email service providers rushed to purchase it.

October 2000: NetEase launched 163 free mailbox.

November 2001: 163 free mailbox was upgraded to 25 megabytes, the largest capacity in China at that time.

September 2002: NetEase launched 163VIP mailbox, creating a new situation in which free and paid mailboxes coexist on the Chinese Internet.

May 2003: NetEase’s free email market share jumped to first place in the country.

September 2003: NetEase launched the "professional email office" 126 Free Mail. Subsequently, 126 Mailbox quickly seized the market and NetEase's market share in the free mailbox market further expanded.

September 2004: NetEase Mail led the Chinese email market into the G era.

April 2005: NetEase launched 188 Fortune Mail, a new generation of paid mailbox that symbolizes dignity and value, and its market share of paid mailboxes increased significantly.

August 2005: NetEase was the first to launch NetEase Cloud Disk, which was well received by users.

September 2005: NetEase innovatively applied Ajax technology in the Chinese email industry, fully upgraded and revised to "Extreme Speed ​​Style", leading the next generation of webmail technology

June 2006: NetEase was the first to trigger the "3G revolution" in the domestic email market, upgrading the capacity of its free email services to 3G.

June 2007: NetEase launched the newly upgraded yeah free email service.

October 2007: NetEase launched unlimited capacity upgrade services for its three free email brands.

2008: NetEase Mail launched a number of functional services including music box, treasure box, stamps, etc., which fully demonstrated the concept of "one box with multiple functions".

March 2009: NetEase announced in Beijing that it would officially enter the corporate email market. It is not only the largest email service provider in China, but also the email service provider with the most comprehensive layout.

January 2010: NetEase announced the "@ Plan" and the "Ruhutianyi Plan", launching NetEase mobile email and free corporate email.

April 2010: NetEase launched a free corporate email service, thus forming NetEase’s eight major email brands.

November 2010: NetEase Mail was the first to enable IMAP service by default for all NetEase's free mailbox users.

March 2011: Following the significant increase in SMTP sending speed and attachment uploading speed, the upload speed of large attachments increased by 3 times.

May 2011: NetEase announced that its total number of email users reached 360 million.

In August 2012, the launch conference of NetEase Mail 5.0 was held in Beijing. NetEase announced that the number of NetEase email users has exceeded 500 million, the number of active users has exceeded 100 million, and the number of mobile email users has exceeded 60 million.

In November 2012, NetEase Mail Integrity Open Platform was launched, becoming the largest email security alliance in China.

In July 2014, NetEase launched the first notarized mailbox in China to solve the problem of difficulty in issuing certificates via email.

In August 2014, NetEase released a new all-round mobile email client - Mail Master, which became a strategic product in the mobile market.

In September 2015, it was awarded the "EAL3+ Information Security Level Certification" by the China Information Security Evaluation Center, which is the highest level of email system security certification in China.

In August 2018, the total number of effective users of NetEase Mail exceeded 1 billion.

3. User scale

As of Q4 2019, the total number of registered users of NetEase Mail reached 1.058 billion, and its product lines covered three major sections: free mailbox, Mail Master, and enterprise mailbox.

4. User attributes

1. In terms of regional distribution, the proportion of users in coastal and economically developed areas is relatively high, led by Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Hangzhou.

2. In terms of age distribution, the largest number of users are in the 20-29 age group, accounting for about 60%, followed by users in the 30-39 age group.

3. In terms of gender distribution, male users are slightly more than female users, accounting for about 60%.

4. NetEase Mail User Growth Strategy

1. Product life cycle analysis

NetEase Mail has entered its mature stage.

Based on the officially released total user data of NetEase Mail from 2010 to 2019, we used the S-curve to fit and predict the early and subsequent user data of NetEase Mail. By comparing it with the S-curve of the conventional product life cycle, it can be judged that NetEase Mail has now entered the mature stage with slow user growth.

The operational strategy for the mature stage of the product focuses on increasing user activity and promoting commercial monetization; the user growth strategy for this stage is to optimize existing promotion methods on the one hand and explore new promotion methods on the other.

2. User growth strategy

Currently, the growth of domestic personal email users and NetEase email users has entered a period of slow growth. It has become more difficult to achieve large-scale new additions in a short period of time. It has become particularly important to focus on the quality of growth and pay attention to aspects such as user acquisition, activation, retention and monetization.

Faced with the rapid development of QQ Mail, NetEase Mail's first-mover advantage has gradually weakened over time. Seizing the market and maintaining its dominant position is a key long-term task that requires joint efforts from multiple aspects such as operations, products, technology, and marketing.

1) User acquisition

As mentioned earlier, NetEase Mail is currently in its mature stage. To achieve new users, on the one hand, it is necessary to optimize existing promotion methods, and on the other hand, it is necessary to explore new promotion methods.

Optimize existing promotion methods:

After years of development, NetEase Mail has built a relatively stable user growth channel, including SEO optimization, website navigation portals, and binding of other NetEase business accounts.

To optimize existing channels, we must first evaluate channel quality. We can conduct a comprehensive assessment from aspects such as channel scale, single user cost, and user retention. We should focus on maintaining high-quality channels with large traffic scale, low cost, and high user quality, and reduce maintenance or abandon low-quality channels.

For high-quality channels that are maintained as a priority, based on the conversion formula (converted users = channel traffic * conversion rate), the number of converted users can be further increased from both the channel traffic and conversion rate aspects.

On the one hand, you can increase investment/strengthen promotion efforts to increase channel traffic, such as adding more long-tail keywords in SEO; on the other hand, you can improve conversion rates through continuous testing, adjusting ad positions, copy, images, etc.

1. Explore new promotion methods

Inventory of common ways to attract new customers (including promotion methods that have been used):

Paid purchase growth:

• It is usually understood as spending money to buy users.
• Common methods: channel delivery, SEM, purchasing sales leads, etc.
• Key point: CPC < LTV.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

By updating original articles, obtaining external links from high-authority websites, etc., search engines will believe that the website content is of high quality, thereby improving the website's ranking on search engines and obtaining more natural traffic.

User communication recommendation:

• Built on the platform's reputation, it stimulates users to actively share through benefits and achieves growth by spreading product information through users' acquaintances.
• Unilateral benefit model: the user who sends the invitation obtains benefits, such as collecting likes.
• A mutually beneficial model: both the sender of invitations and the invited users can benefit, making it easier to split.

2. Cross-industry cooperation

• Different types of business enterprises with the same target user groups can cooperate with each other to direct their users to each other and achieve cross-marketing promotion.
• Common methods: issuing coupons for cooperative products/receiving product privileges, such as Taobao’s 88 membership card and driving traffic to products such as Youku/Ele.me.

Ground promotion:

• Face-to-face promotion is carried out in offline channels where target users are concentrated, such as theme events and subway entrances, with the aim of attracting users online for further dissemination.
• Common methods: verbal notification, leaflet distribution, roadshows, offline activities, joint marketing, street and building BD

Subsidy rewards:

• Through subsidies, users can experience the advantages of a product or service, and ultimately stay and continue to use it.
• Common methods: cash, red envelopes, cash back, phone bills, discounts, points redemption, interest rate increases for financial management, and interest-free loans.

Content Marketing:

• We continuously output content related to products and core user needs through various media channels in the form of graphics, text, audio, video, live broadcast, etc., and attract user attention and conversion through high-quality content.
• Commonly used carriers: official accounts/Toutiao accounts, Zhihu Q&A, free public courses, live broadcasts, and short videos.

Event Marketing:

• By planning, organizing and utilizing people or events with news value, social influence and celebrity effect, we can attract the interest and attention of the media, social groups and consumers.
• Points to note: The ultimate goal should be to promote the sale of products or services, rather than a short-lived eye-catching approach; the cost is low and the means are diverse, but the risk is high, and it needs to be coordinated with the subsequent conversion follow-up stage and is not easy to replicate.

Event Marketing:

By taking advantage of hot spots or creating topics, users are attracted to participate in activities through raffles, solicitations, voting, etc., so as to achieve the purpose of attracting new users or promoting brand exposure. 3. Preliminary screening of promotion methods

When users use new products, they will go through a process of transformation from cognition to trust. The two links may be continuous in time or separated by a long period of time.

Just like email products, most users will not register an account immediately after seeing an advertisement (except in special circumstances such as benefits attraction), and they usually register only when they need a new account.

In the cognitive stage, users may be exposed to advertising information actively or passively; in the registration stage, for email products, due to the uncertainty of conversion time, the possibility of actively pushing advertising information is low, and users are more likely to be exposed to the product in an active way.

Therefore, our promotion methods need to include the following types:

• Focus on product exposure to let more users know;
• Focus on product conversion and guide user conversion;
• It is effective in the long term, allowing users to continue to actively access product information.

The promotion method for preliminary screening is as follows:

• Search engine optimization: It has been carried out on a regular basis, focusing on exposure, relatively stable traffic, and long-term effectiveness
• User communication recommendation: Focus on conversion, relatively stable traffic, long-term effectiveness
• Content marketing: focuses on conversion, with higher traffic during the promotion period, and the timeliness of promotion depends on the content theme
• Cross-industry cooperation: Depending on the form of cooperation, it can focus on exposure or conversion
• Event marketing: Depending on the form of the event, it can focus on exposure or conversion. The traffic during the promotion period is high and the promotion is time-effective.

Additional notes:

• Different promotional methods can be integrated. For example, paid growth can be combined with event marketing to increase event exposure through advertising.
• Ground promotion and subsidy incentives are more suitable for newly launched new products, but not for mature products.
• Event marketing is risky and difficult to control, so it is not suitable as a regular method.

(Because the information on existing promotion methods that can be collected online is relatively fragmented, the above screening methods have been more or less used by NetEase Mail)

4. Examples of specific promotion methods

User communication recommendation:

NetEase Mail already has a large number of users. If the method of using old users to attract new users works, the effect will be considerable. The recommendation function can be embedded in product details to guide users to make recommendations through value-added services.

For example:

• During the attachment upload process, if the user's attachment size exceeds the limit, the user can be guided to invite new users to register. Successful invitations will give the user one chance to upload an extra-large attachment (the number of times needs to be confirmed through testing)
• On the ad-free privilege activation page, you can guide users to invite new users to register. Successful invitations can get 30 days of ad-free privileges for free (the number of days needs to be confirmed through testing)

5. Content Marketing

Most of the users of NetEase Mail are between 20 and 39 years old. After using a certain email account for many years, users tend to continue using it without changing it. Therefore, the marketing targets are mainly those who have just started to use email, that is, college students and new employees in the workplace.

NetEase mailbox users use mailboxes mainly for sending and receiving work emails, so the topics of content marketing are preferably workplace-related;

It is best for content marketing to have social currency so that it can bring large-scale exposure through user dissemination.

For example:

• Data inventory topics: NetEase Cloud Music, Alipay, etc. have carried out this program. At the beginning of each year, they generate personalized data inventory topics related to email usage for each user, summarizing their work and life trajectories in the past year. Under the influence of voyeurism, this type of topic is easy to spread within the user's social circle.
• Special topic on practical workplace knowledge: 100 unspoken rules in the workplace that you must know! ——Collect classic workplace precautions and interpersonal experience that are highly liked by users, present them in the form of comics, and create content topics; embed NetEase Mail elements in the topics. When selecting topics, you can refer to search data to cater to user needs and use appropriate clickbait titles.
• Zhihu Q&A: Post special topics on Zhihu to promote NetEase Mail, which can be news releases, data reports, etc.; answer topics related to email and promote the core advantages of NetEase Mail.

Cross-industry cooperation:

You can select APPs with similar target user groups, jointly carry out activities, and promote them on both sides' channels.

For example:

• Cooperate with Zhihu APP and apply for Zhihu Yanxuan membership + NetEase mailbox membership at the same time to get discounts and take advantage of Yanxuan membership day to carry out joint promotion on Zhihu and NetEase mailbox. Because there is a high degree of overlap between Zhihu channel users and NetEase mailbox users, the users attracted will be more accurate.
• Cooperate with job search websites/APPs. Job seekers who newly register for NetEase email (must have never registered for NetEase email before) can get value-added services on the job search website/APP for free. NetEase pays the job search website/APP based on the number of new email users. The cooperation is mutually beneficial for both parties.

Event Marketing:

For example:

• Testing activities: Test your emotional quotient in the workplace - plan a series of multiple-choice questions in different work scenarios, and generate different emotional quotient scores and titles based on the answers chosen by users; embed NetEase mailbox elements in the activities.
• DIY activities: My ideal working environment - provides wallpaper, office desks and chairs, windows, decorations and other elements, users can choose and DIY their own office environment portrait; NetEase mailbox elements are embedded in the activity.

6. Promotion effect verification

For each promotion, if there is historical data, we should refer to the historical data to evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility of the promotion method. If there is no historical data, we should first conduct a small-scale, short-term test to evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility, make corresponding optimization adjustments, confirm that the method is effective and the effect is optimized, and then carry out large-scale promotion.

2) User activation

Effective activation can be defined as: users use the core service, focusing on how long after registration the user takes this action.

• This can be determined based on similar products in the industry.
• Determined based on the activation time of existing retained users.
• If the user uses the app frequently, it is also necessary to determine whether the activation is valid based on the service type, such as binding a bank card to a shopping platform.

To achieve effective user activation, you need to find the Aha moment, that is, "Who completes what behavior [how many times] in [how long]?" You need to analyze the retention curve and user behavior data to find the activation behavior that is most correlated with retention, and calculate the magic number through the maximum marginal utility method or Venn diagram.

After finding the Aha moment of new users of the product, based on the user behavior formula: Behavior = (motivation - resistance) * boost + reward, you can use incentives, manual work, channels, products and other activation methods to specifically guide users to complete the activation behavior, thereby improving the product's new user activation.

One of the keys to activating users of NetEase Mail is to guide users to experience the functions of sending and receiving emails, which can be done through functional demonstrations after new users register and log in.

Regarding Aha moments, I recommend reading this article: Before talking about new user activation, ask yourself: Have you found the right Aha moment for your product?

3) User activity and retention

The premise for user activity and retention and corresponding operational actions is to reach existing users of NetEase Mail. In terms of reaching channels, in addition to the app and web, third-party channels such as SMS, WeChat service accounts, and Weibo are also very important.

Common contact channels include:

1. APP

The audience is users who have downloaded the app. Users can be accurately identified and users who have not logged in for a long time can be recalled through push. Logged in users can be guided to use specific functions to develop habits.

2. Web

The audience is users who have logged in to the web terminal. Users can be accurately identified and are suitable for guiding them to use specific functions to cultivate habits.

3. SMS

The target audience is all users who have bound their mobile phone numbers. Users can be accurately identified and the reach rate is extremely high, making it suitable for event promotion and user recall.

4. WeChat Service Account

The target audience is all users who follow the WeChat service account. It can accurately identify bound users and has a high reach rate. It is suitable for event promotion, brand image promotion, and as a simple entry point for sending and receiving emails and a user feedback interaction channel.

5. Weibo

The target audience is all users who follow the official Weibo account. It is impossible to accurately identify users and the reach rate is average. It is suitable for event promotion, brand image promotion, and as a user feedback interaction channel.

The specific retention strategy can be considered from three dimensions: content, function, and activity:

1. Content retention

In terms of content retention, users can be grouped according to the RFM model, and users who have frequently used their mailbox but have not logged in for a long time can be recalled through APP push or SMS push.

2. Functional retention

In terms of function retention, by analyzing the function usage and corresponding retention data, we can strengthen the drainage of high-retention functions and improve or reduce the drainage intensity of low-retention functions.

3. Activity retention

In terms of activity retention, you can conduct activities to guide users to log in to their email accounts and use email functions.

For example:

• Launch the Time Mail campaign, where users log into their mailbox and write letters to themselves. The emails will be delivered to the user’s mailbox at a specified future time (they can be sent to themselves or others). The event provides beautifully designed envelopes and stationery, as well as annual reminders, which are more ceremonial and distinguished from the regular scheduled sending function.
• We are launching a homepage greeting collection campaign. Users can log in to their email and send their greetings to the designated email address. The selected greetings will be displayed on the homepage of the NetEase email product, and selected users can receive generous rewards. Carefully planned greetings are warmer, more sentimental, and can enhance user favorability.

4) Product Monetization

1. Guide advanced users to upgrade

Users are organized into layers to guide those who send and receive emails frequently, need to upload large attachments frequently, and have paid to remove ads, to upgrade and activate paid mailboxes.

2. Introduce third-party advertising

Provide advertising exposure for third-party advertisers to generate revenue. At the same time, in order to avoid user annoyance (some users currently report that there are too many NetEase mailbox advertisements), it is necessary to screen brand advertisements that are in line with user minds, control the frequency of pushing advertisements to the same user, and avoid excessively affecting the user experience.

Regarding the problem of advertising interruption that has received a lot of feedback from users, in addition to screening the types of ads, it is also recommended to control the quality of advertising materials and unify them with the UI style; reduce pop-up ads, which are a form of advertising with a high display priority, and replace them with splash screen ads and information flow ads.

3. Drain traffic for internal business

NetEase Mail has a huge user base, which can divert traffic to other businesses that are being developed within the company and promote monetization conversion. We are currently continuing to direct traffic to NetEase Yanxuan, which is also produced by the email team. If we direct traffic from NetEase Mail to NetEase Open Courses, NetEase Cloud Reading, etc., as their user attributes are similar, I believe it will also have better results.

4. Add value-added services

The charges for paid mailboxes are too expensive for some users. For users who do not want to spend too much money but want to enjoy more services, there are reasonably priced value-added services for them to choose from. For example, the current app already has the privilege of being ad-free, and it can also provide the function of uploading large attachments (charged on a per-time basis), provide beautifully designed stationery (charged on a per-volume basis), etc.

Author: 浥

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