We all know that Gmail, which has 400+ million users as of today, has always tried innovating its mailbox. And now after labels, filters and priority inbox, it's time for the new Tabbed Inbox.
Since this new tabbed inbox is only recently launched and is a customizable feature, the level of acceptance amongst our audience might be clear only after a few months. However, Gmail still forms over X% of the total user base of the majority of brands today. With such huge figures, it would be criminal for the email marketer in us to not be aware of the new inbox's functioning, implications and think of all possible ways to make our emails stand out in the crowd of the promotional tab.
Gmail’s tabbed inbox segregates emails into 5 sections:
· Primary: personal conversations
· Social: messages from social networking websites, dating portals, media sharing websites etc.
· Promotions: deals, offers, and other marketing emails
· Updates: auto-generated emails and newsletters.
· Forums: messages from online groups, discussion boards, and mailing lists.
This new inbox introduces an array of pros and cons to any email marketer.
Let’s first have a look at the cons:
The first being users don’t automatically see promotional emails as soon as they log in. It takes more than a conscious effort to navigate to the promotional tab to check offers and deals.
With a users’ attention already distributed among 5 separate folders, emails that land into the spam folder are left with little scope of engagement from the users.
With all promotional emails cluttered in a single box, with little need to skim through the mailbox for important personal content, the need to stand out of the crowd through a prominent sender name and the catchy subject line is more imperative than ever.
Having said that, it also comes with its own set of pros:
Users who actually look for promotions will have access to a more systematic way of viewing the emails.
The constant pop-up at the top of every tab indicating the number and sender name of new messages notifies the user of his new offers making it easier for a user to check his offers at his convenience.
Promotional emails are spared from the clutter of other updates, notifications
While we are still in a nascent stage of research to comment on the exact behaviour of Gmail’s Tabbed mailbox, listed below are a few things that we need to do to keep our performance up.
Ensure strict hygiene check of content to avoid getting our emails routed to the spam folder
Experiment with various time slots to check when our audience is most active
More relevancy in content to keep user engagement high
Special attention on the subject line and sender name to maintain the unique identity of our emails among other promotional emails.