1. GMAIL’S CONCEPTS

1.1. What is Gmail?
Gmail was a project begun by Google developer Paul Buchheit years before it was ever announced to the public. It’s a free webmail service that offers consumers advanced searches and a huge volume of storage with the caveat that content will be scanned and users targeted with relevant ads. Gmail is still a beta version which means the current gmail service is still improving.

1.2. Competiton
The main webmail services are Microsoft (Hotmail) and Yahoo! (Yahoo mail).
After Gmail's initial announcement and development, many existing web mail services quickly increased their storage capacity. For example, Hotmail went from giving some users 2MB to 25MB, then 250 MB after 30 days (2 GB for Hotmail Plus accounts), while Yahoo Mail went from 4MB to 100MB (and 2 GB for Yahoo! Mail Plus accounts). Yahoo Mail storage then proceeded to 250MB, and finally, to 1GB.

Other than the general increase of storage limit, there has also been an improvement of the e-mail interfaces of YahooMail and Hotmail after the launch of Gmail. Gmail's ability to have an attachment size of 10MB was also matched by Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail during 2005. Following the footsteps of Gmail, Yahoo launched Yahoo Mail Beta service and Microsoft launched Windows Live Mail (successor of hotmail).

2. Gmail Special Features

- Cost : free
- Storage : 2.6 Go
- Languages : 38
- Access : from every computer connected to internet

2.1. Spam and viruses
Gmail is really efficient to prevent viruses, google take the security of its users very seriously. In addition to virus protection that automatically scans your attachments and tries to remove any viruses found in them, Gmail also doesn't send or receive any executable files since most computer viruses are contained in these sorts of files.

2.2. Chat with Gmail
With Google Talk, Gmail integrates the email and chat functions so you can see when your friends are online and get in touch with them however you want. Having email and chat in the same web browser means you can now chat with your friends wherever you have Internet access. You can even save and search for your chat histories without to loosing important information.

2.3. Google Calendar
Google Calendar allows you to view your appointments by day, by week, and even up to the next 4 months. It allows 'quick adding' of events, in which an appointment can be added by entering a natural-language phrase containing the details of the event, rather than by filling out a detailed form. Additionally, Google Calendar provides an agenda tab that allows you to see all upcoming events in list form. The settings of the Calendar are highly customizable, allowing you to change your time zone on the fly, changing the day that the week starts on, creation of multiple calendars, and sending of notifications to your cell phone.

2.4. Gmail Picture
Gmail pictures allow you to put a face to a name, by showing user-selected pictures when you roll over a name in your inbox, Contacts, or Quick Contacts list. You can choose your own photo for yourself and for your contacts, suggest a photo for a contact to use, or see what your friends have selected for themselves.
Gmail pictures can be configured to show to all users who you email or who emails you, or they can be limited to only the users who are able to see when you're online.
The new feature won't be available for all users at once, it will be rolled out slowly just like the chat feature was.

3. How Gmail was launched and found new users?

Since Gmail was launched in April 2004, Google has been focused on improving the service, relying on users to spread the word and invite others to try it out.
Google has stated that the purpose of the invitation system is to reduce the amount of abuse, as spammers cannot register near-infinite numbers of accounts as they can do with completely open services such as Hotmail.
At the beginning, Gmail was launched through 1 000 users who were Googlers which means people who work or worked for Google Inc. Then, the access to the service was restricted to those who had received an invitation from an existing account holder, from Blogger, or through mobile phone (only from Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, New Zealand, Philippines or the United States via SMS Signup).
Today, while Gmail is not entirely open to the general public yet, most Gmail users have many invites to spare, as Google gives most users 10 to 15 invitations (and frequently replenishes them, as a reward for users who frequently check their Gmail accounts). Gmail invites are also given away at random through Google's home page, and it is also possible to sign up if one has a mobile phone from or you can find free Gmail invites at various Web sites.

Every account which is inactive for 9 months gets de-activated by Gmail. All stored messages get deleted and the account gets "recycled", which means the account name can be used by any other user afterwards. Other webmail services, like Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, have different, sometimes shorter, times for marking an account as inactive. Yahoo Mail de-activates dormant accounts after four months, while Hotmail de-activates accounts after only one month.

4. How Does Gmail Earn Money?

There are small, unobtrusive, and relevant text ads alongside your Gmail messages, similar to those on the side of Google search results pages. These ads are placed through the Google AdSense program. With this program, Website owners can enable text and image advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on a per-click basis. Google utilizes its search technology to serve ads based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors.
By extending its AdSense programme, the content of emails will be scanned for keywords so that relevant ads can be included in the message page.
The goal is to provide users with helpful ads, links and content relevant to their specific interests.

What about privacy?
- The matching of ads to content is a completely automated process performed by computers. No humans read your email to target the ads, and no email content or other personally identifiable information is ever provided to advertisers. Ads are never inserted into the body text of either incoming or outgoing Gmail messages and you won't see any pop-ups or untargeted banner ads in Gmail.
- The act of sending an email message consists of having a number of programs on different machines read and store your mail. Every time you send an email message, it is typically routed through a number of computers to get to its destination.
- The amount of personal data already collected by credit agencies and direct marketers dwarfs what might be gleaned from email.
- Finally, no one is obliged to subscribe a Gmail account.


5. The Two Major Marketing Concepts Of Gmail

5.1. Sponsorship
To sponsor something is to support an event, activity, person, or organization financially or through the provision of products or services. Sponsorship is typically done for promotional purposes, to generate publicity, or to obtain access to a wider audience.
Sponsorship may be an arrangement to exchange advertising for the responsibility of funding a popular event or entity. For example, a corporate entity may provide equipment for a famous athlete or sports team in exchange for brand recognition. The sponsor earns popularity this way while the sponsored can save a lot of money. This type of sponsorship is prominent in sports, the arts, media and the charity ('cause-related') sector. It is also becoming increasingly important in education. Many companies want their logo on sponsored equipment in return. Formula One teams, for example, have heavily relied on the income from tobacco advertising.
Although a company's motives may be altruistic, sponsorship is more commonly used to derive benefit from the associations created for a company's brand(s) or image as a result of the sponsorship.
People may sponsor an individual or group of people to undertake a fundraising task, usually for a charity or other cause requiring funding.
The word sponsor derives from the Latin word for guarantor.

For consumers, consequences of this sponsorship are:
- The consumer find it useful, and he recommends it to his favorite contacts (trust relation)
- This concept consolidates social links between consumers
- The consumer become a prescriptor (customer empowerment)
- A financial advantage
- Discovery of new services
We evaluate consumer advantages when this sponsorship is made between people who know themselves. We can also said that consumers are free to choose or not this sponsorship.

For the company, consequences of this sponsorship are:
- The concept is more efficient against spams
- Google doesn’t need to spend money for promotion, because customers are doing this themselves and they contribute to the fame of the brand (word of mouth)
- To build customer loyalty
- A financial advantage, money can be used to others projects
- Development of databases

5.2. Communities on internet
First of all, each Internet user is a part of a big community of 694 million members. Since Internet creation, there were communities that allow chat and forums for example. But during the last years, the number of communities really increased. Nowadays a lot of trade sites use communities as a marketing tool.

Communities evolution
Communities existed since the beginning of Internet. But this solution is really interesting since the end of 2000 because of 3 main phenomena. First of all, Internet allows the segmentation of canals. Then, Internet now offers several communication tools like emailing, newsgroups, immediate freight forwarding... Moreover people are more familiarized with these tools. Finally, the number of Internet user has increased in all social and occupational categories and at all ages.

Return on investment for companies
The aim of these communities is first of all to generate profit using ads. Meanwhile, the community area doesn’t seem to be a favorable space for advertisement. In fact, people using community’s area don’t pay attention to ads during their chatting activities. So, for a big part of them, it is impossible to finance communities directly by advertising.
Nevertheless, communities have a big interest for trade sites. In fact, it can be used to help customer during his buying acts. For example, the book comments on Amazon are really helpful for customers. Studies show that community members on trade sites are generally bigger than others.
The biggest return on investment is due to the development of customer loyalty to the website or the brand. The consequences of the communities are especially an increase of the number of visits. This increase can be explained by different phenomena:
- People are closer to the brand.
- The brand developed an expert image on its domain.
- People contribute to the product value.

Communities can also help companies to increase the return on investment with other ways than advertising and the development of customer loyalty. In fact, communities can replace the technical support, for example for softwares and games. Moreover, the content of the communities spaces dedicated to product or service is really interesting for the benchmark activities of a company. It can study the image of the product but also the new expectations of the customer. It allows to better knowing the customers and users. The communities are also an ideal space to recruit experts for qualitative and quantitative studies. Companies can also earn money using communities with the paying access or with complementary premium services. But this activity only generates a marginal profit. Moreover, it can be a risky activity for companies. In fact, a consumer which is unsatisfied will communicate on the community about his un-satisfaction. We know that in the real life, an unsatisfied consumer will communicate his problem to 10 friends, whereas a consumer satisfied will communicate his satisfaction to 3 friends only.

Profitable Internet communities are today largely minority. However, they are the result of a tendency of the individuals to create on Internet of the social groups as well as in the real life.

Consequences of the community for consumer
The membership of a community gives to users a social reference. In fact, we can refer to the Pyramid of Maslow to study the needs of people. The community also helps people to create a network between the users. It also allows people to share information, subjects or opinions with a common interest, but also to share their own experience (we test and we improve!). Nevertheless, as a community member, people could be affected by prejudices from other people.

Conclusion

Currently, to grow, a company needs more than loyalty; it needs customer satisfaction, customer retention, and referring customer.
Gmail is using referring customer through the sponsorship strategy and customer retention through the community strategy. Its growth will depend on the customer’s satisfaction and on the future trends of marketing.