Someone in the email marketing industry (who is known, among other things, for sending out really good chocolates every Christmas) asked me if we had an update to this old blog post from 2009: Major Email Provider Trends: Yahoo and Hotmail Tops, Gmail Catching. I like it when he sends me chocolate, so I thought we better provide an update:
Back in 2009, Gmail was a distant 3rd, but trending up. Now, Gmail’s right there with Hotmail and Yahoo. Sorry, but there are a few months there where we kinda had an oopsie and forgot to track Gmail for this study. But you still get a good picture of how far gmail has come. C’mon, it’s at least good enough to earn my chocolates, Mr.Brownlow.
For those of you who prefer data in table format:
| month | aol.com | comcast.net | gmail.com | hotmail.com | yahoo.com |
| 10/01/10 | 34,405,902 | 12,021,698 | N/A | 108,936,564 | 97,049,812 |
| 11/01/10 | 42,714,047 | 14,824,531 | N/A | 135,558,433 | 121,705,469 |
| 12/01/10 | 46,863,742 | 16,240,985 | N/A | 151,263,034 | 136,168,289 |
| 01/01/11 | 40,369,729 | 14,110,332 | N/A | 138,908,566 | 128,182,859 |
| 02/01/11 | 41,395,605 | 14,562,288 | N/A | 148,440,912 | 137,340,143 |
| 03/01/11 | 51,137,268 | 18,088,971 | 183,464,335 | 181,109,737 | 172,499,322 |
| 04/01/11 | 52,277,331 | 18,287,080 | 196,894,151 | 190,469,251 | 182,697,979 |
| 05/01/11 | 55,657,059 | 19,440,357 | 217,716,403 | 223,951,543 | 205,835,434 |
| 06/01/11 | 59,218,272 | 20,573,197 | 236,351,334 | 237,811,895 | 231,766,109 |
| 07/01/11 | 59,124,900 | 20,966,657 | 249,286,991 | 250,853,114 | 238,816,082 |
Each month, you see how many emails are sent through MailChimp to the webmail domains above. Kind of gives you an idea of how much email MailChimp is sending these days (about 2 billion per month).
Somewhat related:
- Track domain performance stats
- User agent stats inside MailChimp’s Inbox Inspector
Oh. I was really hoping the subject line meant the body of the email was going to announce that Gmail had finally caught up to other email clients in CSS/web standards capabilities.
Ha. Sorry to disappoint!
Now that’s interesting. Not so much the Gmail bit, but that AOL is “growing” as well. Granted, this table is as much to do with email volume as it does ISP/E-mail Provider growth/loss, but I’m amazed to see that much AOL still out there.
I wonder what the average age of an AOL subscriber is….
Chocolate always works: I’ve built an entire business strategy on that concept.
Thanks Ben!
It might just be that G+ will give Gmail (and other Google products) a big boost. They recently made some changes to their interface. I’ve made a little overview of it here:
http://www.emailmonday.com/impact-of-new-gmail-design-email-marketing
Great work on the stats Ben. Would you say that these figures are representative for the rest of the industry as well?
You’ve got a point there. I pretty much used Gmail as a “dumping ground” for email. It’s more of a “reader” for me, while I prefer desktop apps for writing. But their redesign is actually making me enjoy composing messages in their interface, so I’m guessing it might make me send more email directly from Gmail.
I have no idea if the stats are representative of the rest of the industry, to be honest. Stats are usually very suspicious to me, unless there’s an extremely large sample size. In this case, it was several billion outgoing email addresses we tabulated, so I think there’s something useful in there somewhere.
Rather than giving away free t-shirts and hats, for the more sophisticated clientele MC should give away “Chimplates” — chocolates in the shape of chimps! Okay, only kidding…
Big 3 Webmail neck-and-neck for volume – Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoomail http://bit.ly/pferbG via @mailchimp
Major Email Provider Trends Update: Gmail Pretty Much Caught Up | MailChimp Email Marketing Blog http://st.cm/mZQsRO
It’s probably actually a lot bigger than Yahoo if you count Google apps for domains. I would imagine since they’re only tracking by recipient domain name that the actual numbers are vastly understated. The only issue, though, is they have no way of knowing what software is actually being used to read the messages since most mail clients support gmail, yahoo, etc. Add to that iOS and Android devices and you basically have no idea what people reading your mass emails are using.
Wow. 2 Billion emails/month. RT @MailChimp Major Email Provider Trends Update http://t.co/QepGvtR
RT @MailChimp: Major Email Provider Trends Update: Gmail Pretty Much Caught Up http://t.co/QepGvtR
Judging from MailChimp’s latest stats at http://t.co/WcrTVvj my newsletters make up a whole 0.018% of their mail volume
via @MailChimp: Major Email Provider Trends Update: Gmail Pretty Much Caught Up http://t.co/QepGvtR
Major Email Provider Trends Update (infographic): Gmail Pretty Much Caught Up via @MailChimp http://ow.ly/5WhFv
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This isn’t quite the perfect post to add this comment to but my question relates to subscriber performance which might have a thing or two to do with ISPs…
I recently read about a company, Moosejaw, offering customers the option to snooze emails. That way rather than a binary, subscribe or unsubscribe option, the customer can opt to receive fewer emails or snooze email delivery for a period of time, etc. It would be sooooo awesome if MC could offer this feature. Here’s where I read about it:
http://www.dmnews.com/moosejaw-mountaineering-offers-email-snooze-button/article/208058/?DCMP=EMC-DMN_EmailMktingWkly
Thanks so much!
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Hi Ben, just came across your article. Very helpful, thanks.
How is the usage distributed based on geography, do you have any insights on that? I have been trying to understand whether there are subtleties of webmail preference based on where you live (e.g. Aol and Hotmail might still be popular in smaller towns, vs Gmail in urban areas) etc.
Looking forward to your response!
Hi! We didn’t do any filtering based on geography. But I think your assumption is right–where you live definitely seems to be a factor in what webmail provider you choose. You can even see it here: http://www.visualize.yahoo.com/
My own stats for Jan 2012 are:
gmail 350M
yahoo 310M
hotmail 213M
The gmail and yahoo numbers (published by each of them) neatly correlate with my business. My hotmail number is extrapolated from my traffic. I think hotmail has either been fudging numbers, or has died a rapid death recently.