How Gmail Priority Inbox Will Affect Your Email Marketing

from Net Atlantic

What is it?

Gmail's new priority inbox automatically sorts your email into your regular inbox and your priority inbox like so:

The idea is that people have so much email these days that we need more than a spam filter – we need an administrative assistant to sort through the masses of email and escalate what's important.

Gmail's priority inbox takes over that role by noting whose emails you open (and reply to) and uses that information to prioritize your emails.  You can also manually move items up or down, teaching the filter to apply this rule to any similar emails.

The key advantage is that you no longer have to spend your valuable time sifting through ads and marketing campaigns.  For the consumer, this is a great idea.  Your mom will stop being irritated that you never answer her emails because you're too busy reading up on the next iPod release. And I suppose, if you want an iPod, you can set your inbox to stop prioritizing the dozens of emails from your mom that are distracting you from your product research.

Why you should care:

For the people writing product releases, marketing campaigns and event promotions, there's yet another potential barrier between you and your holy grail – email engagement: opens, clickthroughs to your landing page and ideally, conversions.

And it's hard enough these days – not only are there new sophisticated screening methods you must be aware of in order to get your email into the inbox, now you have to worry about getting into the RIGHT inbox.

How you can get around it:

If you're running your campaigns correctly and following best practices (to name a few – sending useful content that your readers care about, marketing to an opt-in list ONLY and respecting your subscribers preferences regarding how frequently they would like to receive your email) then you have nothing to fear.

If your subscribers want your emails, you will land in their priority inbox and stay there.  And if you're engaging your audience, they will continue to open your emails.

The same rules apply, this is not earth-shattering news.  Instead, treat this as a gentle reminder from the innovative folks at Google that like any other form of communication, your emails to your subscribers should be helpful, relevant, welcome, and most importantly, the continuation of a conversation that your subscriber wants to have.

Resources:

To learn more about Google's Priority Inbox, read the Google Mail Help Article or watch Google's Priority Inbox video.

For more articles like this one, please visit our blog.