Dealing with the Tabbed Inbox in Gmail
No doubt you’ve seen or heard the pandemonium about Google’s new change to Gmail. In their infinite wisdom they’ve come to the conclusion that they could manage your inbox better than you can, and have “helped” you accomplish this by separating your incoming mail into several “tabs”. The first one is your Primary tab, where the majority of your important mail (again, in their view) goes to roost. Next is the Social tab, where your social media mail is placed, last but not least, a Promotions tab, where things deemed commercial or promotional is pitched. You do, (for the time being) are able to create custom tabs or revert to the old inbox. But how long will that survive?
So what are your choices?
If it’s your personal Gmail account, you can simply go with it, custom adjust your tabs, or for now, switch back to the old Inbox. But if your aim is the open rates of the emails you’re sending to your lists, you’ll want to be a bit more hands-on that that. Only your most engaged subscribers will take the hassle to move your emails, and that means that most of your messages go unopened and unread. Right now there is evidence that open rates are plunging because of this, and to complicate things, now Google is placing email subject line-like ads on top of the promotional box, making it even harder to compete for attention. While no other email providers have followed suit yet, it’s probably only a matter of time. The key now is being aware of what we can do in order to avoid having our emails find themselves in “promotional hell”.
Four tips to help get your emails read in Gmail
- Create Serialized emails – keep them wanting more, no matter which inbox it ends up in.
- Avoid hypey words in your subject lines. This only helps Google define it as promotional.
- Let people know that if they don’t see your emails, check in their promotional tab and move them for easier access.
- Make them anxious to view your next email by delivering terrific content!