THE NEW GMAIL INBOX TABS - SUCCESS GUIDE What It Is, What It Means for Marketers, and What to Do About It
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SUCCESS GUIDE THE NEW GMAIL INBOX TABS What It Is, What It Means for Marketers, and What to Do About It
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StrongView Systems, Inc. StrongView Systems UK Ltd. XCOM Media
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Copyright © 2013 StrongView Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Trading Address: Adelaide House, Perth Industrial Estate, Slough, Berkshire, SL1 4XX,
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Table of Contents
THE SITUATION................................................................................................................. 4
WHAT IT MEANS FOR MARKETERS............................................................................... 5
WHAT MARKETERS SHOULD DO................................................................................... 6
1) Quantify the Effect – Find Out What’s Happening to Your Email Campaigns.....................6
2) Call Out the Change – Educate Your Consumers...................................................................................7
3) Stand Out in the Inbox – Grab Attention with Your Subject Lines.............................................8
4) Stay Current – Use Dynamic Content to Ensure Messages Are Always Fresh........................8
5) Don’t Rely on Email Only – Embrace a Cross-Channel Approach..............................................8
6) Don't Forget the Basics – Earn the Primary Tab in Customers' Minds......................................9
ABOUT STRONGVIEW.................................................................................................... 10THE SITUATION
Between May and July of 2013, Google introduced a new tabbed
inbox for Gmail – their latest email interface for desktop and
mobile that automatically sorts incoming emails into five inbox
categories: primary, social, promotional, updates and forums.
Gmail Tabs – Desktop
Android iPhone
As shown above, by default the new tabs structure separates users’ inbox views into the
following five tabs:
Messages from friends and family, as well as any other messages
Primary
that don’t appear in other tabs.
Promotions Your deals, offers and other promotional emails.
Messages from social networks, media-sharing sites, online dating
Social
services, gaming platforms and other social websites.
Updates Notifications such as confirmations, receipts, bills and statements.
Forums Messages from online groups, discussion boards and mailing lists.
How does it work? All Gmail users have now been rolled over to the five tabbed inbox
interface as the default view, but users can choose to customize their tabs experience. They
can configure their inbox to enable a specific selection of the five tabs, or choose to disable
them completely and revert to the classic view – Gmail will auto-sort the inbox based on these
individual user settings. The auto-sort algorithm for the new Gmail tabs also adapts to user
preferences the same way Gmail’s spam filter and Priority Inbox do. For example, you can drag-
and-drop emails from the Promotions tab to the Primary tab, and Gmail will prompt you to
create a filter for all future emails coming from that sender to appear in the Primary tab.
So why did Google introduce this new inbox interface? In short, to try and improve the user
experience. The latest in a long line of efforts by email providers to offer a more curated inbox
experience (think Outlook.com’s sweep functionality introduced in 2012 and Google’s own
tabs precursors, the Priority Inbox in 2010 and colored labels in 2007), the new Gmail tabbed
inbox is designed to make email management easier for the many users who are inundated
with an ever increasing quantity of daily emails, yet don’t bother to customize their own
inboxes. As Google describes it, the new tabbed inbox "put[s] you back in control so that you
can see what's new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read and when."
4 Success Guide: The New Gmail Inbox Tabs
Copyright © 2013 StrongView Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. SV-D-10813WHAT IT MEANS FOR MARKETERS
First off, let’s look at where marketing and other promotional emails are landing in the inbox.
Only the people at Google understand the exact functionality of the algorithm that determines
which tab a particular email will appear in. Just as with SEO tactics, we have glimpses of what
affects the categorization, but no clear definitions. That said, it is likely that if you are a brand
marketer sending email, that email will appear in the Promotions tab of your recipients’ inboxes
unless they opt to disable the tabs interface or indicate that they want to receive your emails in
the Primary tab.
The next big question is: how does this affect email campaign performance? The answer to
that will depend on your particular business model, the specific marketing strategies you
employ and the behavior of your target customer segments.
Reports from the industry on the impact of Gmail tabs on email campaign performance to
date have varied. Most organizations claim a modest decline in open rates, but some claim an
actual increase. While it’s too soon to predict the long-term impact that Gmail’s tabbed inbox
will have on email marketing at large, it is safe to say that this is just the latest development in
the general trend towards inbox foldering. Gone are the days of single, user-filtered inboxes.
Approaching are the days of inboxes curated automatically by email clients based on historical
engagement. It’s important for the email marketer to future-proof their marketing strategies to
make sure that their messages continue to be seen in the emerging world of inbox foldering.
The following section will show you how.
What’s important is how
Gmail’s tabbed inbox
is affecting your email
campaign performance.
5 Success Guide: The New Gmail Inbox Tabs
Copyright © 2013 StrongView Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. SV-D-10813WHAT MARKETERS SHOULD DO
1) Quantify the Effect – Find Out What’s Happening to Your Email Campaigns
First and foremost, find out what's happening to your email campaigns. Identify who in your
contact lists have gmail.com addresses. For frame of reference, StrongView clients are finding
that gmail.com addresses compromise about 20% of their contact lists on average. In addition,
it’s important to note that not everyone who has a gmail.com address reads their email on
Gmail’s web or mobile app, and therefore may not experience the tabs interface. Bottom line –
the portion of your contact list that is affected by Gmail tabs is likely fairly small. However, you
still want to understand what’s happening to that segment.
Start by looking at the performance of the following metrics:
Open Rate
Are you observing a decline in open rates for your gmail.com segment over the past few
months? Did this decline begin after July 5th, 2013 (the date Google began rolling out the
tabs interface to all Gmail users)? Are there any other factors that could explain the drop?
Be sure to consider things like varying email volumes and other factors (i.e. transactional
vs. batch emails, day of the week, etc.).
Time-to-Open Rate
Are you observing increased time-to-open rates for your gmail.com segment? One
possible effect of the new tabs format is a delay in opening emails filtered into the
Promotion tabs. While not necessarily a negative, such delays are important to track,
especially if your promotions contain time-sensitive offers.
Click-Through Rate
Are you observing a drop in clicks as a percentage of delivered emails? Or have they risen?
Also look at your click-to-open rate; this will allow you to see if a drop in open rate has
corresponded with a drop in engagement as well. It’s possible that your falling open rate
may be merely the effect of unengaged users no longer occasionally opening one of your
emails as they come across them in the inbox. If your emails are now appearing in the
promotions tab, unengaged users are less likely to casually open those emails.
Revenue Per Email
Even if you see drops in your open or click rates, first check to see if your revenue per email
or other relevant performance metric has decreased before taking any corrective action.
Once you’ve looked at your metrics, you may find that the change hasn’t caused any big shifts.
Continue to report on this segment for the next few months to make sure you capture long-
term trends, but don’t take unnecessary actions to correct a problem that isn’t there.
If you are seeing a significant drop in your metrics, it’s time to take action. The remaining steps 2
through 6 outline a strategic plan for getting your email marketing engagement back on track.
Review key Gmail engagement metrics
to understand the impact to your brand
6 Success Guide: The New Gmail Inbox Tabs
Copyright © 2013 StrongView Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. SV-D-108132) Call Out the Change – Educate Your Consumers
Several brands have had success educating their Gmail subscribers about the new Gmail
tabs experience and providing simple instructions on how subscribers can make their emails
easier to access. Consider sending a separate email to all of your subscribers with a gmail.com
address prompting them to redirect your emails to the Primary tab. Another option would be
to dynamically populate the pre-header of your emails to Gmail subscribers with the same
instructions, replacing the old “add us to your address book” approach.
In the email example below, StrongView client zulily combined a Gmail tab message with a
promotion of a relevant sale event to encourage customers with Gmail addresses to take action.
7 Success Guide: The New Gmail Inbox Tabs
Copyright © 2013 StrongView Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. SV-D-108133) Stand Out in the Inbox – Grab Attention with Your Subject Lines
If your emails appear in the Promotions tab, they are more likely to appear with other
promotional emails – and now even in-line ads from Google advertisers that are nearly
indistinguishable from bona fide emails. This means it’s more important than ever to use
attention-getting methods to make your subject line stand out in the inbox. There are a
number of techniques for optimizing subject lines to garner attention and compel action,
including personalization, trigger words and differentiation. For more information on these
and other subject line optimization strategies, visit www.StrongView.com/subjectlines.
4) Stay Current – Use Dynamic Content to Ensure Messages Are Always Fresh
If you’re noticing increases in your time-to-open rates within your gmail.com segment, don’t
panic. This is an opportunity to deepen engagement with consumers by providing real-time
content and offers that will capture your recipients' attention when they choose to open their
marketing emails.
One tactic to accommodate this potential time-to-open shift is the use of dynamic content
in your emails. By embedding your messages with dynamic content that generates relevant
information in real-time when a recipient opens your email, you’ll make certain that the
products or discounts offered are always current, ensuring that your recipients never feel like
they've missed out.
5) Don’t Rely on Email Only – Embrace a Cross-Channel Approach
As the trend of a more curated inbox continues, it’s time to expand your approach as a brand
and move beyond email as a stand-alone tool to reach out to current and future customers.
Email remains a powerful channel for engaging customers and driving revenue, but it should
be leveraged within integrated cross-channel campaigns that span
other key customer touchpoints like mobile, social and display.
Cross-channel campaigns have the added benefit of being less
fragile to changes in technology, such as the recent introduction
of Gmail tabs.
Now is the time to take the steps necessary within your
organization to create a truly integrated cross-channel marketing
experience for your customers. Gmail tabs are just the most recent
and largest-scale manifestation of the ongoing inbox foldering
trend we’ve seen from other email providers. The fact is that ISPs
have been filtering emails for their users for a while now, starting
Lessen the impact of Gmail tabs with cross-channel lifecycle campaigns with using past interaction data to determine which emails bypass
that level email alongside key channels like mobile the inbox. Gmail tabs is the latest iteration of ISP efforts to provide
consumers with a better inbox experience, and it won't be the last.
Bottom line: Conducting email marketing in a silo is a risky and outmoded strategy. It’s time
to think cross-channel. How can you leverage mobile apps, SMS, display and other channels
in conjunction with email to reach customers at critical points in the customer lifecycle? How
can you move between these channels seamlessly so you’re not susceptible to changes in any
one? This strategy will become even more important as other email providers like Yahoo, AOL
and Outlook.com follow Gmail’s lead and begin automatically filtering incoming emails into
multiple folders.
8 Success Guide: The New Gmail Inbox Tabs
Copyright © 2013 StrongView Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. SV-D-108136) Don't Forget the Basics – Earn the Primary Tab in Customers' Minds
This should go without saying, but the best thing you can do long-term is to be important
and relevant to your subscribers. If you’re valuable to them, they will make sure they get your
message, no matter where it lands in their inbox – because they want to.
Remember – Google did not develop Gmail tabs to harm email marketers. They did it to
provide Gmail users with a more user-friendly, manageable email experience. As marketers we
must adapt our marketing strategies to meet the changing needs of our consumers. And what
consumers are demanding is interaction with brands when and where they want it – on their
own schedule and via the channel of their choice.
In order to make sure that your email messages continue to meet the changing demands of
consumers in this post-Gmail tabs world, marketers need to commit to the following:
•• Understand how their email campaigns are performing
•• Educate consumers on the new Gmail tabs environment
•• Focus on creating relevant and engaging subject lines
•• Use dynamic content to keep promotional emails current
•• Embrace a cross-channel approach
•• Continue to make their brand relevant and important to their subscribers
Follow these steps and you’ll find that the new Gmail tabs can be a marketing opportunity,
not a cause for fear.
9 Success Guide: The New Gmail Inbox Tabs
Copyright © 2013 StrongView Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. SV-D-10813ABOUT STRONGVIEW
StrongView is the cross-channel marketing software provider that gives enterprise marketers
a stronger view of how to acquire and engage customers across email, mobile, social, display
and web. Combining the strongest technology and proven marketing know-how, StrongView
provides enterprise marketers unparalleled insight into how to deepen customer relationships
and maximize results. The platform is offered as both SaaS and on-premise, allowing companies
to deploy StrongView’s technologies in the manner that best fits their needs.
Based in Redwood City, CA, and backed by leading venture capital investors, StrongView
has been helping global brands in retail, travel, finance, entertainment and online services
overcome the limitations of other marketing platform providers for more than a decade.
For a stronger view of marketing go to www.StrongView.com, and follow us at
www.twitter.com/StrongView and www.facebook.com/StrongViewInc.
StrongView
Toll free U.S. +1 (800) 971-0380
Toll U.S. +1 (650) 421-4255
Toll U.K. +44 (0) 118 903 6068
info@StrongView.com
10 Success Guide: The New Gmail Inbox Tabs
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