Just like those famous Hollywood stars, email is instantly recognizable. All grown up from its humble beginnings as a simple messaging system, email is now the number one direct marketing tool for business.
Email’s cool backstory
Throughout the years, the history of email is full of weird and wonderful moments, which show us email is here to stay.
In 1971, for someone to think up electronic mail as a way to send messages from computer screen to computer screen was a marvelous feat. Especially when you consider computers were another item no one ordinary knew about. Living in those times, experiencing that life, is what makes graduate coder Raymond Tomlinson’s invention — email communication — so remarkable.
Because it was so ‘far out’ as an idea when he raised it to his superiors, they told him not to work on it — they didn’t think it was that important.
So Tomlinson, who worked for ARPANET, a precursor to the Internet, on coding file transfer programs, pursued email as a side project (and had to swear his colleagues to secrecy) because it ‘seemed like a neat idea.’
Just imagine where we’d be today if he had listened to his bosses!
Email: the technology superstar
Today, in the field of communications, email is a superstar. Let’s take a walk-of-fame tour through email’s 50 years so far.
To start, we need to go way back to the 1970s, to a time when messages were sent on paper! To set the scene, in the early 1970s, portable music players were just becoming a thing, and they’d use magnetic tape as the storage device.
It’s just so hard to picture a world without the Internet, without computers, without smartphones — there were no last-minute cancellations by cell, either. If you turned up late to meet a friend at a coffee shop, you had to show on time, use a grimy payphone on a street corner, or risk annoying them.
It all began in the 1970s
When Tomlinson started work on his electronic mail system, he had to build everything from scratch, including the address system.
The famous ‘@’ symbol ‘simply made sense’ to Tomlinson, who borrowed the idea from cash registers he’d seen in the shops ringing up ‘10 items @ $1.75’ (the @ sign, of course, standing for the word ‘at’). Before barcode scanning, the till operator would use the ‘@’ to multiply your items.
Thanks to Tomlinson, @ is still a stand-in for ‘at’ but now is used by everyone to locate the address ‘host’ computer, e.g., ‘Ray@computer1’.
By 1972 Tomlinson’s superiors at ARPANET, part of the U.S. military, realized leaving e-messages worked fine on a single computer, but if you wanted to get ahold of someone else on another ARPANET host in another location, you had to use a telephone. And the 24/7 schedule enjoyed by computers faltered when messages arrived only by telephone call, requiring a human to respond.
Suddenly, the brightest minds in the world realized the electronic messages would wait to be read — so you didn’t have to keep calling or worrying about time zones. Instead, you could leave a message for any teammate 24/7.
Talk about early adoption! In 1976, ARPANET joined a United Kingdom mail server to the United States, and Queen Elizabeth II sent her first mass communication message to all connected hosts. The monarch announced a new code language invented by the British while visiting the Ministry of Defence’s scientific research hub, the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment. The language? CORAL, short for Computer On-line Real-time Applications Language.
Later in the decade, high school student Shiva Ayyadurai bizarrely claimed to have invented email. His registered copyright on a program he’d called EMAIL while working on a medical internship was a fact hotly disputed by ARPANET.
Email races into the 1980s
Onwards and upwards! In the 1980s, the race was on to build applications that use email. Many tech companies released first-version mail-share software. Xerox led in PCs, and the notable Xerox Alto V9 with WYSIWYG-based virtual office was the first desktop to include email. When viewed by Steve Jobs and a group of Apple Engineers, Xerox concepts led to the first Apple Lisa and Macintosh systems’ design.
Later in this decade, the Yuppie generation (a Young urban professional person in employment) took to the mobile phone’s invention and the ease of on-the-go communication. The thrill of leaving voicemail messages (which used email file transfer concepts from ARPANET) caught people’s imagination, setting off a dot.com boom, all thanks to Wang Laboratories.
Email goes interstellar in the 1990s
On August 28, 1991, NASA received the first email from space. As those watching this unfold on television oohed and aahed, the creation of Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) made email attachments possible — which looking back, was a significant event for Post Office services everywhere.
It wasn’t until 1993 Tomlinson says the term ‘email’ first became a ‘big thing’ because ‘somebody [a journalist] asked the question: Where did email come from?” This was the first time the term ‘email’ — an abbreviation of ‘electronic mail’ — was published in the mainstream news. There were only 1000 users at the time.
And then email took off!
In 1996 the first launched web-based email service — now incredibly familiar to us as Hotmail — put to rest a lot of the frustrations experienced with early version email software. The name came from arranging the HTML language letters to form HoTMaiL, soon after, known as Hotmail.
Those who had home computers at this time adopted Hotmail fast. By the end of their first month, Hotmail had more than 20,000 subscribers. By January 1997, the one-millionth subscriber signed up.
A boom in business and home computing saw emerging entrepreneurs realize the potential of all-in-one Internet systems and the attraction of email communications — to us ordinary folk.
The 2000s and email is everywhere
The original thought behind email was to leave a message someone could pick up on their own schedule, while you could go do something else. It’s probably fair to say without that idea, we wouldn’t have social media, networks, direct marketing, e-vouchers, online shopping, or anything else that allows us to pick up where we left off, any time we like.
The years between 2000 and 2010 saw many new software innovations — too many to list here. But it’s fair to say without Tomlinson and ARPANET working on email and File Transfer Protocols — inventing ways to move information around a web-based system — we might not have any of this.
By 2010 email is a household name
By 2010, ’email’ had become a key search term on Google. In 2018, opinions sealed as people preferred to write “email” and not “e-mail.” Google Trends proved this as the best way for a company to write “email” in their comms. No hyphen. Case closed.
At Namecheap, in 2011, we launched Private Email (now called Professional Business Email). Our customers needed a trusted, secure business email address they could match to their business domain names. Email soon became a vital part of our business success story. When you consider the number of global email users is set to grow to 4.6 billion by 2025, we’re glad to be providing a professional email service for any business, solopreneur, or individual who champions a brand.
Email to infinity and beyond
What is the future for our email superstar? It’s hard to say, but here are a few incredible stats that show how far email has come:
- Those of us signed up to email accounts grew to 4 billion in 2020, with each user owning 1.75 accounts on average.
- Email is the #1 direct marketing tool for business, and 307 billion messages go out daily (2021). This is expected to grow to 376 billion by 2025.
- In 2021, 46% of emails are opened on a mobile device — a trend expected to increase, particularly in developing nations where mobile use is the most popular way to access Internet services.
- Today, 31% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020).
- Marketers who send segmented campaigns from a trusted email address note as much as a 760% increase in revenue. (Campaign Monitor, 2019).
Let’s celebrate! An awesome email offer for you
Email turns 50 this year and is deserving of its A-list status in the tech world. We’re celebrating this momentous event because email creates much of the hustle and bustle driving economies. Email lives at society’s heart. We’d love you to celebrate this milestone birthday with us.
Our gift – your 50 at 50
To help you grab a birthday slice of the action, we’re giving you a whopping 50% discount on all our new Professional Business Email plans.
That’s 50% for you on email’s 50th birthday — your 50 at 50. You just need to enter EMAIL50AT50 into the shopping cart whenever you purchase any new plan.
It’s simple, and it’s for everyone! Which plan will you choose?
- Save 50% on Starter email plans. Suppose you’re just starting out or in the early stages of your idea. In that case, you’ll want email to pass through spam filters and reach your recipients, particularly when following up on a first-time inquiry, order, or content subscriber sign-up.
- Save 50% on Pro email plans. As your client list grows, Pro adds groupware support to enable you to personalize content for different groups, apply automation and build relationships with customers. There are additional mailboxes included.
- Save 50% on Ultimate email plans. In addition to all Pro has to offer, Ultimate is designed for larger businesses to help you use email flexibly to expand your company, adding extra mailboxes, storage, and running apps. There are five mailboxes included, but you can add more to any plan at any time for a minimal cost.
You can use our email hosting with any domain you have registered with us or anywhere else, or just as a stand-alone plan.
When does the promotion start?
It all kicks off on April 6th at midnight EDT and runs for seven whole days (until 11.59 PM on April 12). This offer is open to existing Namecheap customers and new customers too.
Help to get the most out of your new email plan
We’ve hand-picked a few fantastic resources to point you in the right direction with a hosted email account.
- Why your remote business needs a professional email. Are you a first-time business email user? Learn why email is the best way to stay connected.
- Namecheap’s Business email setup 101 guide. When you need help and advanced tips to set everything up.
- Short, snackable videos demonstrating Professional Business Email features. Easy-to-follow videos showing you everything you can do in your email account.
Why not get the most out of email as a direct marketing tool and get inspired?
- How to write professional email copy that works. Copy tips to make your business email address the center of your business universe.
- How to get started with email marketing. The easiest and most popular ways to promote your brand on email.
And of course, remember to purchase a brand new Professional Business Email plan this week as we celebrate Email’s 50th anniversary!
Email’s 50 years as a tech world A-lister .