Fearing Gmail Promotions

My favorite marketing forum lit up yesterday when someone complained about Gmail putting the emails he sends into the “Promotions” folder.

Several years ago, Gmail introduced folders (“tabs”) to organize incoming email into four categories: Primary, Social, Promotions and Updates.

Most marketing emails sent through third-party software land in the Promotions folder.

Yesterday, an unhappy marketer complained in the forum about the Promotions folder: “This means that a large chunk of emails might not even get noticed, much less opened or read. Are there any ways to get around this?”

Several marketers echoed the complaints and offered various tricks to get mail to the “Primary” folder.

Others suggested quitting email marketing altogether.

I posted the following to the forum:

Fearing the Promotions folder is like fearing the Boogie Man. When I was a little kid, I used to peer under my bed before I went to sleep to make sure the Boogie Man wasn’t hiding there. I got over it. Get over your fear of the promotions tab.

Tons of data show that open rates haven’t decreased significantly b/c of the Promotions tab. So the initial premise (“a large chunk of emails might not even get noticed”) is simply wrong.

We paid careful attention to our numbers when Gmail introduced tabs and we confirmed what the other data show…People still open emails in the Promotions tab. And when they open those emails, they’re not surprised or annoyed to find that they’re promotional emails so opt-out rates actually went down a little bit.

Spending lots of time and energy trying to outsmart google is time wasted.

Marketers make all sorts of assumptions about why some tactic will work or won’t work.

Then they waste time, money and emotional energy acting on those assumptions — chasing false hope or fleeing the Boogie Man.

There’s a better way: Spend time (and perhaps some money) collecting and analyzing the data. Then your conclusions will be rational and fact-based, rather than emotionally-charged assumptions.