Yifang Li
Mixed-method User Experience Researcher
Internship Research on Yahoo Mail
Project 1: Exploring email subscriptions
Year: 2019
Company: Yahoo
Skill: Quantitative Analysis (LME, Cluster Analysis)
Consumer email use has changed rapidly from a person-to-person communication tool to a B2C communication platform on which businesses send deals, coupons, updates, or receipts to consumers. However, to our knowledge, there is no large-scale study on the types of content users subscribe to in their personal email accounts. To explore this topic, we conducted an in-depth quantitative analysis of the subscription data from 50,800 Yahoo Mail users who have at least one subscription.
Specifically, we explore the number of subscriptions that people have, gender and age effects on users' subscription behavior, the categories of email subscriptions that users have, the relationship between categories, and user clusters based on what they subscribe to.
Project 2:
Comparing following behaviors
Year: 2019
Yahoo / Verizon Media
Skill: Survey, Quantitative Analysis, Qualitative Analysis
People have different approaches to follow a brand. For example, they can subscribe to a brand on Email, like the brand's Page on Facebook, or follow its account on Instagram. With people's increasing adoption of social media, these platforms become strong competitors of email from the perspective of marketing.
Back in 2010, a study carried out by Jakob Nielsen found that 90% of the participants elected to receive updates from companies through email, while only 10% chose Facebook. A study conducted in 2018 shows that 20% preferred to receive promotional messages through email, and 20% preferred social media. However, these results come from self-reported studies which could be biased. To have a better understanding of users' following behavior on Email vs. on Social Media, we conducted an MTurk survey to explore whether people follow more brands or stores on Email or Social Media, what categories of subscriptions users have on social media platforms, and under each category, whether they follow more on email or social media platforms.