A Conversation With Josh Jacobson and Marcel Becker of Yahoo Mail

Consumer email is one of the silent wonders of the Internet era. For a recurring cost of zero, people get a lifetime digital home address, gargantuan storage and polished, thoughtful interfaces on all of their digital devices. The work behind the wonder was the focus of this interview with Josh Jacobson and Marcel Becker, respectively the SVP and GM of Yahoo Communications, and the Senior Director of Product Management at Yahoo.

Yahoo Mail is over 25 years old (wow…), and the company used that quarter-century mark to bring a massive interface update to their 200+ million customers. Their focus, as Josh shares, is helping people use email for ‘the business of life.’ The measurable behaviors of those millions of users gave Yahoo some surprising insights about how email is evolving — for example, over half of the messages Yahoo users open relate to shopping!

Marcel is particularly involved in the complex “back end” of the email world — subjects like deliverability, anti-spam, and email security. As he notes, the notion that email is old and going out of fashion isn’t borne out by the numbers — there are millions more inboxes and billions more messages every year.

Yahoo is a market leader in advancing the ‘underpinnings’ that will enable future innovation in email, with strong support for initiatives like structured data and AMP for Email.

Over 1/4 of American adults have a Yahoo inbox. If you’re one of them — or if you use another consumer email platform to manage the business of your life — this is a fascinating peek behind the curtain to see how much work goes into that silent wonder.

TRANSCRIPT

A Conversation With

[00:00:00]

Matthew Dunn: Good afternoon. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the Future of email, our first episode for 2023, and I'm delighted to have Josh Jacobson and Marcel Becker of Yahoo Mail as guests Jenz. Welcome. So

Josh Jacobson: delighted to have you. Thank you so much, Matthew. Great to be here.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah, thank you, Matthew. Sitting with the, uh, sitting with the.

Is that the Golden Gate behind

Josh Jacobson: you? Yeah, that's, we're in San Francisco. That of course is a photo, but

it's

Matthew Dunn: not too far . Right, right. So we were chatting just, uh, just briefly beforehand. I mean, you guys are, you guys are, uh, An incredibly influential piece of, of taking Yahoo into the future. And, and, and I, I was thinking for some reason, somewhere there's someone trying to get their airplane ticket or something vital out of their Yahoo mail.

Yeah. And you're responsible for that. [00:01:00]

Josh Jacobson: we're, we're here to help. Uh, yeah. That's, that's the stuff of life or what we call the business of life. Uh, and email typically is a place where people don't wanna be spending a ton of time. They wanna get in, get what they need and get out. And so we've really been focused on helping consumers save time and

Matthew Dunn: save money.

Yeah. And you used that phrase, the business of life when you launched, I think it was a new version in October. Yeah,

Josh Jacobson: that's right. So celebrating the 25th anniversary of Yahoo Mail. Uh, that's right, . Some, some of us have accounts from way back. Um, and, uh, to, to celebrate just, you know, reimagine and redesign the Yahoo Mail application.

Uh, and one of the great things about being a Yahoo is this consumer focused, so, We have a lot of latitude to focus on what people are doing every day in their lives as opposed to say in an enterprise or an intense work environment. But, you know, what is that stuff of life and how can we help? That's what we've really been been exploring.

Matthew Dunn: I, I, I lo, I love that angle of tack cuz it just seems so [00:02:00] true to what we all do. Marcel, you were talking about some of this, I think I read an interview with you in Dot Magazine a couple of years ago and it seemed like you were already headed. You know, headed this way. Like, look, email is not necessarily what we use to say hi in the morning, but it's still where all of our life details and stuff come together.

Yeah,

Marcel Becker: yeah, precisely. I mean, this is a trend which we have seen for a while across consumer email specifically as, as Josh said, right? And we've really looked at. How are actually real people using email like every day, right? Not just us in the enterprise world where we know have to check boxes and uh, basically rush to these, uh, squares on our calendar, but how do you actually use it as a real person?

Yeah. And uh, you know, some of this really culminated, as Josh said in the. Uh, the recent Yahoo Mail, uh, update we released last year. Yeah. Yeah. Really focus on these [00:03:00] particular use cases. You mentioned the, uh, a flight ticket, right? I mean, I literally stood in behind somebody just recently again, where somebody frantically was browsing and scrolling through the inbox and trying to find the, the ticket, and they couldn't.

They had to basically step aside and, yeah, these are the things we really want to solve with Yahoo may, and really focus on. Creating the best experience for these consumers and helping them really find the things they need when they need them, and really connect the brands and, and organizations delivering that to our resource.

Matthew Dunn: I'd like to delve into some of the, the design process a bit, but, but the better upfront question is, tell me about the reaction from customers since you launched the new version.

Josh Jacobson: Yeah, well, uh, thanks for the layup there because, uh, we had , we've, we've enjoyed really high app ratings since, uh, early 2016.

We've maintained a four and a half star or above. Um, and the ratings went up, which. For any redesign of email, usually you would [00:04:00] expect a bit of a dip be just because change people have trouble reacting to change. Yeah. Um, but net net, the, the improvements and the focus on that consumer experience really paid off.

So the ratings have been higher than ever. , um, upwards of 4 7, 4 8. Some of the dailies went to four, nine and five oh. Um, and, uh, the users are engaging and getting more out of mail. So, um, that's been fantastic. In fact, one of the bright spot you mentioned, uh, you know, waiting in line, but when you combine things like people out on the go and needing information quickly, there's another side of that, which is if they're at home, what if something's arriving at their house?

Like a package? Yeah. Uh, and so one of the things we found, with half of all the emails opened in Yahoo mail, being shopping related, you can imagine there's a ton of package Yeah. Packages that are coming through and receipts that are coming through. Um, and so just connecting people to when is my package gonna be here?

You know, what are the, what are the near realtime updates? Um, and that drove a ton of customer [00:05:00] satisfaction. So that's the kind of thing we'll be doing more going forward is looking. helping users with the stuff of life, the business of life, um, that's represented in email, but then helping them kind of complete the task even further and, and

Matthew Dunn: not be as dependent on thumbing back through the stack.

Josh Jacobson: Right,

Matthew Dunn: right. Exactly. I know the, I know the shipping thing is in there somewhere. I know the, uh, plane ticket is in there somewhere. Right. . Right, right. And I'm gonna spend, you know, 2, 2, 3, 5. digging for it, even though I looked at it yesterday.

Josh Jacobson: Exactly. And I know a lot of your audience are email senders and marketeers.

Yeah. And when you think about the value of email, um, yes, of course there's the awareness of, you know, new deals, new opportunities for the user. There's also just the practical application of having a user have an awesome experience with your brand and part of that, Having them connect to that information as quickly and effortly as, as effortlessly as possible.

Yeah. So the next time they [00:06:00] do an order, they wanna do that again. And so, uh, you know, one of the things that, uh, Marcel's been, you know, working closely with senders on is things like, uh, sending the right schema. So when there is a package on the way, you know, we can help connect a user to that as soon as possible.

Matthew Dunn: Nice. Nice. Yeah. And, and, and start. Start to leverage some of the more structured things that you can do in email. Uh, not without work obviously, but, but can do. That's gotta take a bit of evangelism on your part, Marcel.

Marcel Becker: It does, uh, I mean the email industry in general, right? Um, we really enjoy working with the sending community to create that better experience, but at the same time, as you know, as well, right?

There has to be anri for the, the brands and you know, the e s ESP as well. And that's really where we're really. Creating like that experience and uh, showing these brands and centers that when a user is actually interacting with that, you know, be it through schema or our proprietary [00:07:00] technologies. . It is a tremendous lifted engagement and it helps everybody, right?

The user. They find what they need when they need it. Yeah. And the brands, like depending on what your email you're sending, right? You just have an increase in conversions, engagements. Everybody is happy at the end of the day, and that's really what we want to achieve. And yes, I mean that's why we did the, the sender summit.

I think we talked about this before, this little session where we got together with, uh, You know, the big senders really responsible for 90% of the emails in our system, and we just talked through all some of these tools and features we can deliver. And Schema specifically, like is one of them. Yeah. Uh, Google calls annotations, but it's all the same thing.

Really want to elevate the, uh, the platform to help everybody, but specifically our mutual customers.

Matthew Dunn: I, I, I think the potential for that, I, I'm, I'm a bigger fan. Schema than of amp. And we can, we can have some, uh, fun with that one in a bit. But I think the, the potential for just smarter [00:08:00] structure to the information that's showing up in the inbox, in the guise of a message mm-hmm.

opens up, opens up a bunch of, why haven't we done this , why didn't we do this a decade ago? Kind of pot, kind of pot potential. And it will take. , I think, to, to get people on board. What, I'm curious, your reaction to this. It, it has struck me as I've learned more about the, the, the email space now cuz I was out of it for a bit.

It, as a marketing channel, email's a bit of victim of its own profitability, like companies that run email marketing programs, it tends to be a, a, a real, uh, tent pole for their marketing. And they can keep doing it the same way they've done it even. , the consumer's inbox looks different. The consumer's day looks different.

The consumer's overload is definitely higher reaction. . Yeah,

Josh Jacobson: you're right about consumer overload. I mean, if there's one thing we can definitely bank on is there's just gonna be more data [00:09:00] coming into everyone's lives. Even folks who have no interest in learning any technology whatsoever. Yeah. It's just, it's just flying into their life and it's gonna keep increasing.

Uh, and so if you think. the viability of any communications platform. It's all about signal to noise. And what are the tools that, you know, at the end of the day as a platform that we can provide to senders, uh, and to consumers to make sure that that signal is high, then noise is low. Hmm. Um, and so when their senders who are sending a ton of noise, we have tools on the consumer side.

Find the right signal. Yeah. But ultimately this job is better for everyone. The experience is better for everyone if the senders are sending the best signal possible, and then our users are benefiting as a result.

Matthew Dunn: Right, right. Yeah. They're, they're happier. Even if they don't know why they're happier.

Right? Yeah. They're spending less time on the, the frustrating, the repetitive. , um, you know, find me someone with a perfectly organized inbox and Yeah. And I'm [00:10:00] sure there's, could be a stick grow outta their head cuz they're a unicorn . Yeah. That's, that's

Josh Jacobson: definitely not a, not a big thing anymore. People have pretty much given up on, on an organized inbox and they've more focused on feeling organized and staying organized and that's, yeah.

Having access to the right information when they need it. Yeah,

Matthew Dunn: yeah, yeah. And search, uh, search as a, as a mechanism. message management, you know, it felt like a breakthrough and now it's like mm-hmm. . Oh, crikey. Right. I, I, I need a, I need a major search engine just for my cotton pick and inbox. And some of the, some of the kind of structured and surfacing things that you referenced, I would think would help make that job a whole lot easier.

Oh,

Josh Jacobson: a hundred percent. Because people are, you know, throughout the day, they're in a different mode of activity or what they're trying to. You mentioned earlier, you know, getting a, getting a access to flight information. Um, you know, we call that line the line anxiety moment. Well, we have you, we have a travel tab where who needs, who wants to type.

I [00:11:00] mean, even though phones have tried to make it as easy as possible to type, something sucks. Yeah. At the end of the day, if you could just, Tap a couple times and get to that information, that's gonna, that's gonna be a huge win. And so we have something called the top of the inbox card, which will surface that travel information where hopefully you only have to tap once.

But if it's not there, we have a travel, uh, category where you maybe type one tap once or twice and it's there and you get on with your life and. if we've done our job well and the senders have done their jobs well. Um, the user doesn't really even think about it. They just think, oh, that's where I go for my travel info and I don't have to think about anything else.

Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: And, and, and

Marcel Becker: so much that's so much better than searching, as I said. Right. People don't know what to search for. Yeah. Right. I mean, we all have been there. Like, you pull up the search bar and then you're like, oh, wait, I only know who sent me that email. I don't know when, like, what's the keyword?

Right. and I. Like the, the age of search, this was probably like 10, 15 years ago. Right. We, with email, we really need to move into the age of intent and [00:12:00] now with open AI and, and some of these other tools out there. Oh, you

Matthew Dunn: went there. I was gonna go there. Good. . That is,

Marcel Becker: I mean, it's important, right? We need to stay out of the curve and that's, that's right at on the money, right?

We really want to help our users to make the most out of these emails and just, you know, give them in information they need and they don't have to do anything. It needs to be.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. That, that, uh, yeah. And I'm sure, I'm sure you, you, you made some big strides in that direction with the new release. Was that engineered from the, like from ground up practically?

Josh Jacobson: there, there's a couple aspects. One was, uh, it was redesigned from the ground up, and what we realized is a lot of the design work we had done that was foundational. Mm-hmm. was worth, was worth, uh, maintaining. But there was another layer we could add. What, which I mentioned the, the categories and the tabs.

So we have filters at the top that you can easily tap. Um, and that was added, that was brand new. And then there's a number of, you know, Marcel mentioned intent, so you can imagine. Opening an inbox can be a very stressful moment, [00:13:00] right? Like you mentioned, feeling organized. People, uh, when we, you know, we do, uh, user research and do interviews and people are always apologizing for their inbox, like it's a messy room, or it's like, oh, inviting the queen to your living room, and it's not quite perfect yet.

Like, no, that's your, that's your inbox. And so, um, what we've looked at is, , are there places where you have an intent like shopping, where instead of feeling like you're managing data and every bit of data is stress inducing, why don't you just lean back and browse the data? Cuz now you're shopping and you're not there to like delete or update.

You're there to see like, what are the best deals? Like what's, what's, what's popping, what's happening for me? And so all that information that in the past would be stressful. now, it's, now it's empowering because you have a 40% off deal that maybe you didn't even know about. Right. But there it is right there in the shopping tab.

And so, as we look at intents, we're looking at more and more of these intents that people have in email, but just a regular list of messages might not be it for what? For what we can serve for them. What are

Matthew Dunn: the, [00:14:00] um, I'm not gonna articulate this very well, but what are the, uh, what's the tool set for someone with a new client?

Mm-hmm. to. To try and craft management of their particular intents. I wanna know about this, or I'd like to be

Josh Jacobson: able to get to that. Yeah. So from a user standpoint, you're saying mm-hmm. , yeah. Yeah. So it sort of goes to this question of like, what is, what is the point of view on what managing the business of life even means?

Like is there a best way to manage the business of life? . Yeah. Right. And obviously it'll vary by person, by culture, by situation. Um, I think of r roughly 60% of adults are, are parents. Uh, that's a whole other, you know, level of complexity cuz now you're managing other people's lives, right? And so it's not just messages about what your day looks like, but it's like, oh, you forgot about this and that and the other thing.

Um, and so at a high level, we're looking at a couple things. One is, . We know there's a lot of diversity out there in how people manage life, and email has a different role, but [00:15:00] ultimately there's a couple things we're seeing consistent, which is there are lots of people who just wake up in the morning and they just don't feel confident that they even know what's happening that day.

Mm-hmm. . And so having tools, at least to start with in the inbox to show a. What, what are the messages or the information that's most important to you? That's number one. Mm-hmm. . So we've mentioned some of the, you know, top of inbox, uh, cards and filters, so just to help you stay on top of what's important.

And the other is feeling like you're in control of all that data that's coming at you. and, and so giving you tools so that you're in charge and you're in control and not just like, you're basically, you know, getting crushed by what's, what's thrown your way, . Um, and so as you look at where, where we are going, a, as Yahoo focused on that consumer experience, we wanna give people tools to stay totally in control of their day and stay confident that, you know, they know what they need to do and they start first with what their intent is, and then look at the data and then react to things.

Matthew Dunn: Nice, nice. I could see why the ratings have, uh, I could see why the ratings have gone up with J [00:16:00] just because that's, that's not why we had a lot of the UI tools we had in email, at least historically. Right. , I spent a fair amount of time in around enterprise email. Yeah. And I remember how, how Flipp and emotional people would get when you touched anything related to their email.

Totally. And now that, as you said, we're all like, we're business of life goes into your inbox, right? Um, I've, I've got imagine emotional load is even higher, right?

Josh Jacobson: Yeah. Uh, the, I'd say the difference we're seeing with enterprise versus consumer and I used to work. Uh, company that was very enterprise focused.

And it's like two sides of the coin on the, on an enterprise side. All of your emails from people who need something. Yeah. And that's its own thing because United reply, oh my gosh, if you don't reply in five minutes, you're a bad employee, whatever it is. Yeah, yeah. And it's very different from consumer wear.

All of the senders are essentially businesses or organizations or institutions that. . [00:17:00] Either they're just telling you about something or they're sort of offering an opportunity. And every now and then there's a person who actually needs you to do something. Do something. Yeah. Um, and so the tools for enterprise are all focused around this, like multi people all collaborating on, you know, big projects or even small projects, whereas we're consumer.

It's about helping that individual really stay on top of those things. And so, You can imagine in enterprise, the senders are essentially just people writing emails and consumer. It's a lot of folks listening to this podcast, which are, uh, marketeers and senders who have a huge part to play in making that experience great so that this platform remains vibrant and modern and, you know, continues to be this awesome open platform that we can all improve together.

Matthew Dunn: I, I, I, I, I particularly appreciate the last part of that statement cuz you we're the three of us sitting here talking are sort of in the club of heavily involved in this particular media. Yeah. . When you tell your friend on the [00:18:00] street, uh, email, there's a bit of a. Oh yeah, no. Yeah, that's not, that's old.

It's been around. It's gonna go away. . I was, I was always teeing up the argument. No, it's actually not right. , do you get less mail than you did last year, Fred? No, I didn't think so. Okay. So you know, I won, won that argument, but it does seem like it's time. We kind of evolved the channel, doesn't it? Isn't it?

Josh Jacobson: Oh, yeah, completely. I mean, it's evolving in slow ways. all the time. And it's grow, like you said, it's growing all the time. It's like 3% year over year, very consistently. Number of users, you know, using email grows globally. Yeah. Um, but yes, it, it's gotta stay with the times we can't. You mentioned people, uh, especially, uh, marketers see a high return on investment and they're very.

Happy and comfortable with that. We can never take it for granted that this platform needs investment. It needs us to continue improving it. Mm-hmm. . Um, and on the sender side, we, you know, we've been working really hard with [00:19:00] senders to make sure they know like, What is a great email and how do they send, you know, how do they get some, uh, even some feedback about what's working, what isn't working.

Mm-hmm. , uh, and so yeah, we, we all have to work together to, to keep

Matthew Dunn: improving. Well, I know Marcel, I know you're, you're, you're, you're, you've got a lot of involvement with, uh, you know, with the invisible backend. It makes all the magic happen as well, don't you? Yeah. That's why, I

Marcel Becker: mean, I like to actually call it like a, a revolution, even though it's a very.

You know, slow one , but it is one. And with any revolution really, if you look at history, right, they all have not been sudden. There has been, you know, stuff happened like years before and then there's this one tipping point. And I, and I think we see that, uh, as well with email and, and some of the tools we're working on, you know, be it bi me, be it.

Uh, amp or you know, what Apple's doing out there. I think they're all contributing to that. And they're leading up to this one moment where, [00:20:00] uh, the email marketeers to sending community realizes. only, you know, we need to do something. Right. Um, and because it just makes a ton of sense, right? It is better experience.

We get more conversions. We can actually keep the users within the final, re reduce friction and get them to do and click on things we actually want them to click on. And, and everybody, like I said before, will be happier. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. It, it, it intrigues me that doing this well is mostly. Doing this. By this I mean email as a marketing channel, doing this well is to great extent a question of just doing the right thing in the first place.

You know? Mm-hmm. , talk to them like human beings. Respect their time. Don't pound them to death. You know, don't treat 'em like idiots, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's like, whoa, that's a remarkable experience. , thanks for being decent . Right? You get my business. Really, you do. . It

Josh Jacobson: all goes back to the golden rule, right?

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. To, to a considerable extent. But [00:21:00] we're, we're at the, you know, we're at the end of, we'd sit here at our inbox at the end of a pipeline with, you know, thousands of people potentially on the other end. That, you know, want our attention and I can't subdivide it that much. Nobody can. Right, right. And it's a, that's a constant, it's a constant challenge.

You know, there are, there are inboxes, not, not the plural. There are inboxes that I really delete based on who it came from before I read mm-hmm. , right? Yeah. Horrible. But, , you know,

Josh Jacobson: what are you gonna do? Yeah. You have to make, you have to prioritize your time and make those snap decisions, so, yeah. Yeah. You know, if, if a sender has a reputation with you as a, as a consumer about not sending something valuable, um, yeah.

That's gonna be a mark against them the next time they, they're in your inbox and hard to recover

Matthew Dunn: from. Mm-hmm. , I think. And, but conversely, I don't know why it's popping to mind, but, . I, I, I started playing golf. God dare I said it. [00:22:00] Um, and I, I bought, um, clubs from a little company, a little direct to consumer company out in Vermont, BombTech Golf man.

Their email game is fantastic. nice. They're really good at it. Like the follow up, the linkage between what I was looking at on their website and how they responded in email. You guys are gonna keep growing if you keep this up because none of the big companies in that space are anywhere near as dialed in to, to feeling so one-to-one.

And that the word feeling was very intentional there, right? Like impressive, impressive to see. And it doesn't, wasn't a question of them having a bigger email marketing budget. It was, you know, partially culture, partially execution, partially someone taking the. To think through that message sequence and, and write it well and things like that.

Marcel Becker: That's right. As I always say, like I, I often get asked like at the end of, you know, some sessions might be notice of conferences. It's like, what is the one thing you want everybody to take away? [00:23:00] Yeah. From this, and I say it's really simple, right? Care about your users. They're all human beings. Yeah. Right.

Treat them like you want to be treated. Right. Just be human about it. Yeah. Um, you know, be, be mindful of their time. Uh, be mindful of what your message actually is. Is it something you would want to get from yourself, from that company? If yes, maybe send it. Right. If you don't see a reason, don't send it.

Right. And new users, they will be happier. Uh, if you actually follow that advice, everybody.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. You, you'd, I think Marcel, you'd mentioned, uh, ai, so we, we'll go there a little bit. Um, what, what sort of speculative thoughts do both of you have about technologies like AI and what influence they're gonna have on this space called email?

Josh Jacobson: Yeah. It's interesting because, uh, you know, AI's been, been, uh, improving and been part [00:24:00] of the email experience for decades already. Yeah, yeah. You know, we've had the ha filtering spam, uh, as a product , right. For, for, since almost email was invented. Um, and so it's been a part of email, but I think what you're seeing is a step function.

uh, rise in user expectation around how they can interact with information, especially large amounts of information. Yeah. Yeah. And so, uh, you know, what we've observed with, uh, you know, chat G P t, is people just expecting, you know, expecting to be able to ask questions, have a very conversational, uh, human type of answer.

And expecting not to have to take time to craft searches with, you know, from this and date this, but just saying, here's generally what I'm looking for. Uh, and so as we look at that rise in user expectations, a, we've got a, a lot of, you know, a lot of, uh, head headroom, or, sorry, headway. In the spam filtering and also in some of the [00:25:00] tabs we have where we've tried to make sense of your email, you know, your emails for you by category.

But I think going forward, you're gonna see a lot more from us and, and even from the industry as to summarizing, uh, to even having how, how to craft a search or what information, uh, might be relevant to you at a time when you're not even opening your inbox. So using. using email as a personal database.

Mm-hmm. , uh, from which you can then draw either new actions you maybe didn't even know you should take. And also helping assist you in actions that you need to take right now. Because

Matthew Dunn: a lady standing in line Yeah. Should be able to say, where's my boarding pass? Right. Right. And all the contextual information required to deliver on that.

It's there. Yep.

Marcel Becker: Or even better. Don't even ask. Just open your young man .

Matthew Dunn: Boom right there, right? Yeah. One of the, one of the airline apps I was using the other day, did that on the app. You know, when I opened it, there was the [00:26:00] boarding pass. Yeah, guys, right? Time and geography, duh. That was the right thing to do.

And I was like, hallelujah. Yeah, that was the right

Josh Jacobson: thing to do. And if, and if senders are already sending structured data, that makes it all the easier. All the easier. Yeah. And then as these, you know, as this, uh, these large language models take hold, even the unstructured data will be more accessible. But I still think, especially since email, Update and changing, you know, every second.

Essentially sending that structured data is still a real leg up in terms of user experience.

Matthew Dunn: And, and, and it'll take, uh, it, it'll take delivery from the content side first, right? Marketers have to get on board that train to get a critical mass of it so that companies like you can provide. Books and tools to manage it so that the customer experience is better and it's a virtuous cycle.

Um, you know, they'll, they'll, they'll be some guy still sending really bad boiler plate copy and we'll all have to visit him and beat him up and get him on board [00:27:00] eventually. Well, Marcel, what about, what thoughts do you have about, about the, you know, the, as you said, Josh, the current step, function and awareness of.

Marcel Becker: Same. I mean, we are really in, in violent agreement there, right? , uh, because it's, it's a next step in what I call the revolution. . Right. And it, I think it's a big step really getting us to that experience. Uh, we really all have in mind where, you know, the, the, the email app just does things for you, uh, almost like a concierge, right?

Yeah. Or assistant. Not an assistant. Even like an assistant. You have to ask questions like, can you do X, Y, and Z? Oh yeah. The concierge, right? He knows what you need. Anticipate. He might just hand you that boarding pass mm-hmm. or whatever you need and tell you. . Here you go. Um, and I think the AI really helps with that, both on the, on understanding side.

Obviously, you know, there's a lot of, uh, talk there, a lot of startups, um, , you know, as well. Uh, [00:28:00] and but on the receiving side really makes sense of that. Yeah. Uh, as well. And as Josh said, like that structured data, right? It's not mutually exclusive, like they're all stepping stones or building blocks and pieces of the puzzle to actually get.

Matthew Dunn: Right, right. Yeah. They're, I'm really glad that there's more structure coming to messages because I think it enables us to do things that are frankly just a heck of a hard lift with nothing but asky. You know, nothing but message bodies like they, like, they've looked for 20 years and, uh, I, I hope we see more of that, and that's one of those things that's, it's in.

right? Consumer's not gonna see it. Uh, well done marketing, well done. You know, e s P or marketing platform, the marketer may not necessarily really see it, right? What if it's there? Boy does that matter a bunch? Um, that's a good lateral cuz last big restructure I can think of. The email message was, let's add a body [00:29:00] part for amp.

And I know Yahoo was, was one of the important was and is one of the important supporters of, of AMP for email. How's it. , Marcel.

Marcel Becker: Yeah. So like I said, every, every revolution, right. Uh, starts slowly . Mm-hmm. . Um, and that's certainly if you look at D cm, if you look at Dmar, right? D cm is, uh, over 10 years old.

And, uh, we still have a long way to go for Simmons to adopt it. And we still have to explain what the benefit is. Yeah. Uh, DMAR is the same thing. And, uh, amp and bi, which are relatively new Yes. Technologies, right? A for. . We started in 2017, really in earnest. And, uh, the first beta was released in 2018. That is not long, that long ago.

not long ago in uh terms. Um, but we, you know, you can see a slight hockey stick and in some markets it's, uh, doing better than in others. In you for example. It's doing very well. Cause you know, [00:30:00] you know, our competition unfortunately, is a little , little better there. Uh, but we see actually a lot of ESP now adopting it and providing these, what they call like zero code tools.

Yeah. That's what it makes it really accessible for brands like your average marketeer, right? They can just wreck and drop things into place. Uh, they don't have to worry about how does it actually work? Is it m is it not m is it schema? Is it not Schema? Yeah. Right. They just know, Hey, I want to send this form.

I know I want to collect, uh, you know, data from these users. I want to make sure that they can engage with me. Mm-hmm. , uh, write within the email, write, reduce friction. That's what I care about. How does, how this stuff. It doesn't matter at the end of the day. Yeah, yeah. They don't know. We see, we actually see some, you know, increased adoption, you know, day by day.

I

Matthew Dunn: think the big rock in the road for that particular one looks like a piece of fruit. I think Apple is a big, big, uh, is a [00:31:00] big impediment to wider spread adoption of amp and I don't think they'll ever support it to be blunt. Wanna take a bet, ? Yeah, seriously, I think, I think the. Yeah. Uh, at least a beer.

Okay. . Um, I, I think the whole pivot towards privacy as a brand tent pole that Apple has made, they would be in a very, very difficult position to, to support amp because it kind of, it goes way backwards from the whole move with M P P. .

Marcel Becker: Um, I obviously, I can't comment about what Apple's doing or not doing, uh, because I simply don't know.

Uh, but when you look at some other technology like Bime for example, right? Mm-hmm. , I think Apple is really focusing on two aspects. We are also focusing on, one is the user experience. Make that as great as possible as we have been discussing. And the other one is really why building that great user experience, make sure we.

our uses, you know, data. Yeah. Respect their [00:32:00] privacy and keep them secure. Yeah. Uh, so Apple m p is, you know, doing exactly that. Uh, we are doing similar things. Yes. Uh, I would not say they're mutually exclusive. And you see with Apple now also adopting bik, right. Which, mm-hmm. is in the vein of making the great user experience.

Um, I, I think. There is an opportunity for us, you know, as, as, uh, as the industry to see more growth and adoption there

Matthew Dunn: going forward. Yeah, I'd sure like, I'd sure like to see it. I, I, I'm a fairly hardcore Apple user. There's lots of fruits around here, , but man, their email client's been stuck for a long time.

They haven't done any of the kind of innovation you guys have, in my humble opinion. Well, thank you. Um, oh.

Josh Jacobson: Well, I think Marcel mentioned Bime. For those listeners who don't know, um, that's essentially seeing the logo or the image of the sender when you open a mail. Mm-hmm. , um, which seems like a [00:33:00] really straightforward thing, but one of the blessings and curses, of having this open standard is there's a ton of potential innovation and everyone can compete for the best experience, but then also to have things adopted at scale across the whole platform.

Takes some time, takes interesting. Um, and so we kind of had our own version of Dimi that wasn't open and we were seeing really enhanced just engagement and open rates, cuz people at a glance could see who is this email from without even having to, you know, read right away and then rolling that into a standard, being a part of pushing bi.

Um, we are super excited to see, you know, that, uh, being taken on by, by other big players as well. So, There's, there is always an opportunity once you prove that something is useful for consumers and for senders to, to have it take hold. For sure.

Matthew Dunn: And as a, as a visual communications guy, , I've been delighted to see Mimi's traction like, yay, , name me a company without a logo.

Pretty hard to do that. Right? , [00:34:00]

Josh Jacobson: why do we not see that email? Me too, man. I mean, I, I grew up, I think they identified me early as a kid, as a visual learner. Yeah. And so being an email, I was always like, well, how can we make this more visual? Like, it's all text. It's like, what else? It's all, yeah. And uh, like if you look in the Yahoo Mail app, for example, or even on desktops, like you can go to our attachments view, which is really.

easy to use. Now it's like just all of your attachments from your email, so it's like filtering your whole inbox by just what are the attachments. But then for me as a visual person, and Matthew, you mentioned you are too going to that photos tab of attachments. Now you just have this like, You know, display of a whole vi photo wall of everything Nice.

In your email. Nice. Um, and like my mom's a photographer, she's always sending me stuff. So for me it's like all these great photos. For others it might be, you know, more like the thing you sent your insurance claim adjuster, whatever it is, but it's just a nice visual way to browse email. So you're a photographer too, aren't you, Josh?

I, I, I dabble not professionally. , you're

Matthew Dunn: a photographer. Marcel's an actor. I [00:35:00] love this

There's, there's. , you know, you get lumped in the tech, uh, in the category of being, uh, you know, uh, techie of some sort and the assumption that there's no, uh, there's no other creative involvement kind of have to rattle on one. Right? Oh, for sure. , um, I, I'd asked about this and I didn't actually hook back to it.

Um, in brief, cuz I know we'll need to wrap up shortly. Mm-hmm. , how did you go about tackling the big redesign process for, for the client that you launched? That's a, that's a monster under.

Josh Jacobson: Yeah, it is a monster. , as I mentioned, uh, you know, Yahoo Mail was celebrating a quarter century. Uh, and we have an awesome mix of people who have been in the industry or been, you know, in the company and, uh, for nearly that amount of time.

So you have a lot of institutional knowledge. W you know, Yahoo's always been really fo focused on consumer research and really [00:36:00] being consumer first and understanding users. So we had a really nice history of under learnings from ha watching, uh, people use email, um, alongside them and understanding what they're trying to solve for.

Mm-hmm. . And then what we did is we approached it both as an experience as well as a platform update. Okay. Uh, and so we rolled all that up into. You know, not just what can we respond to from the past years, but what's happening in the moment. Um, and like I said, you know, half of all the emails open were shopping related and what are the pain points around that?

Mm-hmm. . But then, then also, you know, a, a quarter of all US adults have a Yahoo account. And so, um, Yahoo email account. And so, you know, we had this, a responsibility to also just improve their experience and not just, you know, do something crazy and wild for the heck of it. Mm-hmm. . So it was really grounded in understanding users, but then also where we wanted to go as a company, which is staying consumer focused, consumer first.

And so Marcel, myself and the whole team worked together to improve the platform, [00:37:00] uh, as well as that user experience. And so, um, ultimately we're we aligned around helping people save time. Mm-hmm. , so just getting more things done as well as saving money since so much of that activity is around shopping and retail.

Uh, and that's where all those tools came from as

Matthew Dunn: a result. Nice. And, and, and I think in the writeup I saw in the client, it said that, well, and you said earlier that some of the design decisions that were already in place were essentially valid. when you looked at 'em again,

Josh Jacobson: right? Right. Yeah. So, uh, a few years ago we, you know, we saw that the shape of phones was getting, or the size of phones was getting larger and larger, and we wanted everything to be available within thumb distance.

Okay. And so we put some, some foundational tabs at, at the bottom. Um, but what we saw is just human nature. People were always looking at the top first. Mm-hmm. , they're reading top down . And so we kind of, you know, we said, well, high priority information should be available at the top. Oh, interesting. And then things where you.

Shift intent or like what you're really trying to accomplish should be at the bottom. Mm-hmm. . [00:38:00] And so it seems simple. It's like, okay, you're moving some buttons around, but at the end of the day, , you know, millions of people are using this every day, opening, opening up multiple times per day. So these, these relatively small shifts make a big difference.

Matthew Dunn: 2 million people using the flood. Yeah. . Right.

Josh Jacobson: Wow. And then ultimately, where do they land when they go? Um, . And so just looking at all those user journeys and making sure they're not only, uh, efficient but also delightful. That's, that's where the magic comes in. And when you, when you can merge, you know, the promise of an open standard with years of foundational work and developing a platform with just like the best in class designers, just totally killing it on the product side, uh, that's, that's where that, you know, highest ratings ever really, really paid.

Matthew Dunn: you know, it's, it's kind of stunning when you think about the caliber of the tool set that, that you're handing a customer for free. [00:39:00] Oh, whoa. You realize how much time, effort, work, care infrastructure, et cetera, went into this thing that you're just like, okay, sure, I'll open an account with that. Wow. Right.

Of course they probably, you know, they're gonna run their life on it. They'll appreciate it. Right. Exactly. Over time. But yeah, that, that, um, sort of digital portable memory function, that email serves more than anything. I. Like, yeah, it's all in there somewhere. Mm-hmm. , the receipts, the login, that's where I'll get our password reset if I have to do this like Right.

Wow. That's an important chunk of real estate. You know, early days of mobile, what was the killer app? email , right?

Josh Jacobson: That's right. Yeah. And it's totally, it's evolved in how people use it, but it's still a, it's important. It's just change in, in how it's important to people every, every day.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it looks like market response to all of your efforts is, is positive.

I had looked up, uh, litmus, uh, uh, email [00:40:00] climb, market share. I'm like, whoa. Nice jump guys. So, oh, yeah. Yeah. Congrats. That's good. What, here's my parting question. Two parting questions. One, what's next for Yahoo? So answer that one. Okay, .

Josh Jacobson: So, uh, we are investing and playing offense for, for growth, Yahoo as a company, as well as Yahoo Mail, as you know, the product that people most closely associate with Yahoo.

The brand. Yeah. And so what you're gonna see from us is a rolling thunder of innovations on behalf of the consumer, uh, and building out more around what we call helping people manage the business of. . Mm-hmm. . And so today it's the inbox. We're looking at other, what we call mail adjacent utilities that can build from that email experience.

Uh, and ultimately, you know, helping people stay. Like I said, wake up in the morning, you feel confident, you know what the heck you're supposed to be doing, and things are gonna go, go the right way. And then you're in control of what happens next. Yeah. That's

Matthew Dunn: a pro, that's a, that's a promising direction.

It's not like we're not gonna keep managing our lives, you know, [00:41:00] in the palm of our hands. Right. Yeah.

Josh Jacobson: Yeah. Marcel, any other thoughts on the Texa?

Marcel Becker: No, it's basically just supporting that, right? To do actually do that. I think there is a lot of heavy lifting, which needs to be done to get there. Right. Uh, because you said it, you open up this account and it's all free and it just does what you want it to be doing.

But there's a lot of things in the background making this happen. Yeah. And to fulfill this vision, right. We just have to keep investing in that platform, in standards on our side, but also on the standard.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Do you the other, so my next question, my last one was gonna be what? What are some of the things that you think will be happening in the future of email?

Call it a three to five year horizon.

Josh Jacobson: Yeah, so it's certainly on the consumer side, the consumer expectations. will continue to rise. And so email staying as it is today is not an option. Uh, so we really have to, uh, [00:42:00] as, as an industry, um, not only maintain, you know, where we are with users today, but greatly exceed cuz there's a lot of competition for attention and for being useful.

Mm-hmm. , uh, and there's a lot of walled gardens out there that are, you know, one company owns the whole system and that's honestly not, not an internet. That I look forward to seeing. And so as an industry, when we work together to make an open standard better, um, that's gonna be the key. And so, uh, optimistically and I think realistically over the next three to five years, people are gonna not necessarily love opening their inbox, but they're gonna love what email is doing for them because it really powers their day even more than before.

Matthew Dunn: Nice. Nice. Marc. .

Marcel Becker: Yeah. I mean, I often say the email of the future doesn't look like email and, and you see some of these experiences we already build and will be building, they're really leading up to that. Right? We have these different views already talked about the travel view shopping experience.

Mm-hmm. , none of [00:43:00] these look like your traditional email message list and that is good. Um, and, but we need to do more. on the experience side, but also on the platform and technology side. You said it I think, very early on email kind of is a blessing and occurs, uh, both from ascending and receiving perspective.

There's also a lot of abuse happening out there. Yeah. Yeah. And. Tackling that I think is also paramount, right? To keep our users happy, not just help them find what they need, but also keep all the crap out and keep them secure. Yeah. While we help them finding or find what they actually need. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: You just, you know, you imagine the bliss of the consumer who's getting stuff that only stuff that they actually asked for.

One for sign up for like

Josh Jacobson: Yeah. And, and your, your senders who have the user's best interest at heart. , they can clearly identify themselves in really well-documented ways. Mm-hmm. Um, and our site for that is senders.yahoo inc.com. [00:44:00] And Marcel and team have done an awesome job, clearly communicating. If you're a sender and you're sending great stuff, yeah.

Here's how Help us help you help plus help. And so all the tools are there.

Matthew Dunn: Nice. Nice. Well, Jen, this has been an absolute kick. I'm so delighted to have a, had a chance to open 2023 with your time.

Josh Jacobson: Likewise. Thanks for the time. Really appreciate it.