"Your Domain, Your Playground" - Free Trial of Corporate Email Services Sparks a Trend
According to statistics from iResearch, the marketing scale of China's corporate email services for 2009-2010 grew rapidly at a high growth rate of 21.2%, reaching an unprecedented 315 million yuan. It is estimated that the compound annual growth rate over the next four years will be 27.2%, with the potential to reach 825 million yuan by 2013.
The rapidly growing corporate email market will bring enormous development opportunities to all service providers while also presenting unprecedented challenges. After a period of preparation, domestic corporate email service providers have gained confidence in their products, mainly reflected in the free trial offerings. For example, Linktone, one of China’s top ten corporate email service providers, launched a 15-day free trial of corporate email services in August.
Subsequently, other service providers also began offering free trials, though the duration of these trials varied. Some offered seven days of free trial, while others allowed three days, etc. The IDC market has always been a highly sensitive market, and any industry changes are quickly met with enthusiastic responses.
Although free trials are a boon for corporate email users, allowing them to understand the strength of product suppliers and how well the product fits their business needs, caution should be exercised against some unscrupulous merchants who use this as a pretext, turning free trials into high-priced purchases. Therefore, the head of Linktone, which consistently pursues win-win outcomes with its customers, reminds users to pay attention to two points.
Firstly, whether the email trial period is long enough. For instance, some service providers only offer users a 3-day trial. Such a short time is entirely within the risk-controllable range of email service providers, and very few email issues would surface in just three days.
Secondly, confirm whether any payment is required during the trial period. Some service providers offer a seven-day free trial but require payment for the seven days if you do not purchase the service afterward. Some may include such details when ordering, but others might not provide any notice, demanding payment for the seven-day trial period if you do not continue after the trial.
Lastly, determine whether the trial email account is fully functional. If you try out the lowest-end email account, it will naturally be difficult to assess whether this email suits your needs. However, service providers generally offer more feature-rich email accounts for trial to demonstrate the strength of their products.
In the future, corporate email products will be a direction fiercely contested by IDC service providers, with email functionality becoming the biggest competitive highlight. Functions will continue to evolve towards external communication, internal exchanges, and mobile office capabilities on smartphones.
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