It’s a fact of the business: email marketers don’t like change. After all, optimizing our blast emails for maximum deliverability takes a lot of work. So it will come as no surprise that Gmail’s latest change, in which it added a “promotions” tab that keeps most promotional email out of inboxes, has been met with dismay by the email marketing community.
What’s the deal with this new system? In short, Google has turned its new “promotions” tab into a quasi-spam filter. Instead of going straight to email inboxes, most marketing emails head to the promotions tab and aren’t viewed immediately. Users can still view marketing emails, but they now must go looking for them by clicking on the promotions tab. Sounds like bad news for email marketers, right? Well, not entirely. I’ve got good news and bad news for you:
THE BAD NEWS
I like ending on a strong note, so let’s start with the bad news. You know it, I know it – sending promotional emails to a separate, behind-the-scenes tab means that less people will see and read your promotional emails. This is bad, and there’s no getting around it. Studies have shown read rates declining among most email campaigns – an average of between about 1.5% over last year’s read rates. With read rates on average campaigns hovering in the 15-20% range, 1.5% is a pretty big deal.
THE GOOD NEWS
There’s also a silver lining here. The same studies that have shown a decrease in average read rates have shown an increase in both read rates and conversions among “highly-engaged” recipients. Inbox vs. spam placement also improved across the board. What does this mean? On one level, it seems to show that highly-engaged users (the most loyal and profitable customers) now have a dedicated place in which to look for promotional emails. Instead of catching them when they’re busy and unlikely to read email, the tab feature enables them to read emails when they’d like to – meaning they are more likely to read and convert.
Spam rates are down for a same reason – Gmail users are no longer bombarded by unwanted emails in their inboxes that cause them to click the “mark as spam” button. Placing emails in a dedicated folder means they’re only likely to read the emails when they’d like to read emails. That’s advantageous for a good email marketer.
THE TAKEAWAY
What will help you stay on top of Gmail’s big changes? Here are a few tips:
1. Segment more – If you weren’t already, now’s the time to start segmenting your list and targeting your best customers. The blanket newsletter approach looks to be dying, so start targeting the customers who are most likely to click your emails in a tabbed folders or move them back to inboxes.
2. Send less time-sensitive emails – Because promotional emails no longer go straight to inboxes, users won’t see them right away. Emails that say “Big sale – today only” may be stale by the time users read them, so say something like “Big sale – 50% off sale items” instead.
3. Think about “dynamic content” – Some programs allow you to send emails that change over time. You can send an email that advertises one thing, then have it change after two days to read something else. With longer times between sending and opening, this can be hugely beneficial for the timeliness of your emails.