Yahoo Mail is taking a different approach to promotional emails than Google’s Gmail, which in 2013 decided to relegate them to a new “Promotions” tab (happy 10-year anniversary of hidden marketing emails). This week, Yahoo said it would actually give greater visibility to certain merchant messages in its email program.
Yahoo explained, “Unique to Yahoo Mail, Shopping Saver surfaces long-forgotten gift cards, discount codes, and store credits in user inboxes, and drafts suggested messages to vendors to help apply those savings after a purchase has been made. Nearly half of U.S. adults have at least one unused gift card, gift voucher or store credit, and now Yahoo Mail users are able to cash in on their inbox.”
Shopping Saver is just one of the new features that are part of Yahoo’s “AI enhancements” for its email program available in beta. It opened to iOS users earlier this year, and in preparation for a public release, the beta now expands across both iOS and web browsers.
The AI beta expansion is supported by Google Cloud’s AI technology, and also includes upgrades to several existing features:
- Search now suggests common questions to help users find what they’re looking for, creating a more intuitive search experience. Rather than relying solely on keywords or digging through old emails, users can now just ask a question, or select from a list of prompted queries relevant to their search terms like, “how much did I spend on groceries last week?” Along with new filters (e.g. From, To, Date) users can narrow search results even further.
- Writing Assistant drafts suggested replies in the voice of the user, identifying appropriate tones via context clues from existing email chains to best suit the conversation (e.g. professional, casual). The beta expansion increases the available tones from two options to an unlimited offering, allowing the user to choose their desired tone like urgent, grateful, or apologetic.
- Message Summary provides users with high-level summaries of messages, highlighting key information like dates, times, and action items. The tool then suggests tasks, calendar events, and follow-up topics.
Gmail has far greater adoption than Yahoo Mail – but anything that reminds people to shop may be welcomed by merchants. You can find details on the Yahoo corporate website.
