Gmail is rolling out a major re-design of their inbox, which has the possibility of impacting email marketers. This new look includes a reorganization of the inbox into tabs, with emails being sorted into these new tabs prior to any filtering the user has already put in place.
The tabs include: Primary, Social, Promotions, Forums, and Updates. Users can activate any, all or none of these tabs but the default setting is for three tabs: Primary, Social and Promotions.
While it remains to be seen how Gmail users will react to this change as Google is rolling this out to all users over time, this may help organize user’s inboxes and add to their efficiency and user experience. Of course, it may be seen as an added hindrance since another way of looking at this from a user’s perspective is that they now have to check multiple tabs—almost like having five inboxes instead of one.
If you have Gmail addresses on your email list, those emails will initially be put in with a bucket of other promotions. I say initially as Google offers the option for user’s to drag an email out of the tab that the Google algorithm places it into, and place it into their primary tab—where it will show up in the future. But how many users will actually go to the trouble of doing this?
So, assuming they don’t move you into their Primary tab, people using Gmail won’t go to the Promotions tab and won’t even look at your subject line, unless and until they are in a shopping mood. I believe this will turn out to be a good thing for marketers.
I’ve been trying out the new tabs for about a week now and find that I let the messages in my Promotions tab build up all day until I’m ready to look at them. In other words, when I’m in the mood to scan deals, shop or read newsletters, I go to my Promotions tab.
I choose the time to see these emails, when the mood strikes me. And isn’t this better for the marketer? You want your emails to be seen by people who want to see them. (This is the same reason you should have an unsubscribe link at the top of your message. If they don’t want your message—don’t send it to them!)
It remains to be seen how the majority of Gmail users will react to the new tabs and how their behavior may change. Testing your mailing lists and pulling the numbers for any @gmail.com contacts is still key. Take a look at the open rates for this segment in the months leading up to May 2013(when the new Gmail tabs rollout began), and compare those rates to the same contacts on your list for emails sent in (and after) August.
I don’t expect much of a change. While you have to compete against other attention-grabbing headlines, is this really any different than previously, when you had to compete against work emails, other marketing emails plus social media update notifications, messages from family and friends and any spam that makes it through the spam filters?
One impact I suspect we will see is for time-sensitive offers. Your contacts may not check the Promotions tab unless they are in a shopping mood. So they may miss time-sensitive offers with a short window. If your testing shows a dip in engagement overall—or just a dip for time-sensitive offers—this is an opportunity for testing of when you send the offers and the time window you provide to take advantage of the offer.
It may also be time to switch to an email automation platform that dynamically serves content. In other words, an email platform that detects when the email is being opened—and if it is after the window for the offer, it instead serves alternate content with a different (and still timely), call to action. (Actually, this is part of the core functionality of the TailoredMail platform — and as this concludes our shameless plug, I return you to the conclusion of your blog post.)
Email marketing has never been a static thing. As marketers, we always have to adjust and adapt. Gmail’s changes may take some time to play out and adjust to but as long as you deliver valuable offers and content, subscriber’s will continue to look forward to seeing your emails. So. It’s not time to start adapting. It’s time to keep adapting.
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