A new service from Google called Gmail Priority Inbox are just being rolled out now which could affect your ability to get your emails read.
Google are now attempting to make sense of people’s inbox by creating a priority order based upon the email habits of the user. If a user regularly opens some marketer’s emails but not others then they will continue to get preference by being pushed closer to the top of the user’s inbox.
How Will Gmail Priority Inbox Affect The List Builder?
This means as a marketer, the need for quality subject lines, content and the “lookforwardability” [that is a word... honest!] of your emails needs to improve. Simply put, if you get the emails you send read frequently, then you give yourself a competitive edge over other marketers by starting in a position that is more likely to get the user’s attention as they look through their inbox. You can build upon this success by increasing the likelihood of your subsequent emails being read as they are effectively in the “A pile”.
Of course, conversely, this means that if your emails are not being read and are just disappearing into the depth’s of user’s inboxes, then you’ll be relegated to the “B pile” and possibly out of mind.
Check this video out to see how Google are positioning this new service.
By the way, if you’re thinking that this is only an issue for a small number of subscribers using Google Mail accounts, I checked my opt in list and 52% of my subscribers are using Gmail. I’m not sure if mine is representative of the whole. If you know your stats, it would be cool if you dropped them in the comments section of the post below. :-)
It might be worth just keeping an eye on this and seeing how this may affect your list building efforts. Remember of course that list building is not just about building a huge list, it’s about building a responsive list.
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Hi Wayne,
Wow, I don’t like the sound of this. Google now controls WHAT I see …and have ease of access to? Nooooo thank you.
I much prefer Outlook. At least I have full control to set up my “frequent e-mailers,” relegating those awesome jokes to another folder for later viewing… while letting only important business emails enter my inbox. But that’s ME controlling MY email… not Google controlling it for me.
As of yet, I cannot say what percentage of my list use gmail, but I will say this… I’ll be wise to this option from now on. Gives me shivers just thinking that 37% may be ignoring MY offers simply because Google decides my email offer isn’t important enough. Yikes!
Thanks for posting this,
Trish
Hi Trish,
That’s the point of this post…
As a marketer, it is up to you to get your emails in the priority inbox so you can improve your email open rates, clickthrough rates and therefore opportunies for blog traffic and ultimately sales.
As a Gmail user, the default is still the normal inbox which many will use. Savvy marketers may train their email boxes to be slimmed down using Google’s priority inbox. Essentially it is an algorithm which calculates your interaction with various senders.
For example, when you click “Always display images from _______”, you’re sending Google a command which says that you are open to communications from that sender.
The same goes if you reply to the emails or star the emails to come back to later.
If you want tradtional control over your emails, just configure your email client such as Outlook or Thunderbird to your Google Mail account.
Thanks,
Wayne
Hi just found the link to this on twitter. It amazes me just how the goalposts get moved so many times on our online journey. You have to stay on your toes that’s for sure.
If there was a way to predict some of these changes, we could all be millionares by this time next year.
Andy Beveridge
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Hi Andy,
Absolutely, if you’re not on your toes, you’ll quickly fall behind the game.
Thanks for dropping by to comment.
In Google’s mind they are trying to make looking at their email as convenient as possible. But I can also see the other side of it. So whether it actually works or not could be problematic.
Absolutely Ellen, they want to make people’s inboxes better to use.
As an email marketer you need to ask yourself how you can get as many positive votes as possible as soon as you get a subscriber. Ultimately, it comes down to relationships, quality of content and copywriting influence.
I think that’s not a good thing. Many list owners will not know what Gmail is doing, and they will see sales and clicks drop… Another privacy issue if you ask me…
Hi Dirk,
This makes it the list owner’s responsiblity to monitor the changing trends and adjust their strategy as appropriate.
What changes are made to make things “easier” in googles attempts to help with ones organization, gives more work to the other.
I find that alot of the changes to improve, quite often you end up doing more work. I spend too much time some days trying to work out where things are, when all I wanted to do was reading, reply, dump the mails received.
Just because the contact is not regular, does not mean it’s not important.
@Trish, I think I will use your idea and start using Outlook.
Thanks for sharing this Wayne
Julie
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Hi Julie,
Yes, to manage your inbox, use Outlook if you want to remove Google’s priority inbox (which isn’t the default anyway).
However, the article is intended to make list owners think about they’re going to adapt their strategy to get their emails opened, read and their links clicked on.
finally got keywordluv in here, love this website, love it even more now
Hi Mary,
Welcome to my blog.
Glad you got keyword luv.
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