Yahoo! Rolls Out Premium E-Mail Package
The portal giant bundles together a variety of add-on services, as it continues to back up its core online ad business with paid services.
Yahoo announced Thursday it would roll out a premium email package that it hopes will turn users into customers by bundling together a variety of enhanced features.
The Yahoo Mail Plus package, priced at $29.99 a year, follows on the recent test-marketing of a variety of premium services packages by the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based portal. Like the other Yahoo Plus packages being tested, Yahoo Mail Plus bundles together existing Yahoo premium services, such as extra storage space, POP access, and enhanced attachment capabilities for sending multimedia files.
“The launch of Yahoo Mail Plus is part of Yahoo’s strategic initiative to offer premium services the deliver innovative, reliable and relevant services to consumers,” said Geoff Ralston, a senior vice president of Yahoo Network Services.
Yahoo will market the premium email service to current customers who want a more robust email option, in addition to users of Microsoft-owned rival Hotmail. The service bumps up the email storage space from 6 megabytes to 25 megabytes. Yahoo currently offers 25 megabytes of storage on an a la carte basis for $19.99 a year.
The rollout of the premium email service follows the company’s quiet test rollout of numerous premium packages, under the Yahoo Plus name. Last month, some users began receiving offers for a $9.95-per-month service with enhancements like a customized toolbar, anti-virus and spam controls, and an option to try out other Yahoo premium services like games and auctions.
The premium email service bumps up a sender’s message size limit to 10 megabytes, with the ability to include up to 10 attachments from the current limit of three. Other new features include the option of archiving email on a hard drive; the use of Outlook or another mail client to send and receive mail; the option to send messages using other email domains; and the ability to block 200 addresses and use 50 filters to fight spam.
Yahoo offered all of these as standalone services, but now packages them together for about half the price.
Since Terry Semel took the reins 18 months ago, Yahoo has sought to add revenue outside of its traditional reliance on online advertising, in order to offset the prolonged downturn in the Internet advertising market.
In addition to revenue derived from its HotJobs unit, Yahoo has used its technology infrastructure to roll out a number of paid services for companies, including Webcasting and a portal business. Yahoo also struck a dialup and DSL agreement with SBC Communications.
The moves appear to have paid dividends, with marketing dropping from 76 percent of revenue to 59 percent in the company’s recent third quarter.
