Impact of Gmail Tabs on your
Email Marketing
It
has almost been a year since Gmail introduced the new tabbed inbox, objectively
stating that the user would be able to control the inbox rather than the other
way round.
From
a user’s perspective, this is surely a great improvement. Instead of getting
the bulk of your email in one single inbox and missing out on some awesome
promotions (because these might disappear in the junk folder), the user is able
to classify or segregate his/her emails.
On
the contrary from email marketer’s perspective, it sounded a panic bell because
the first thought that pops in mind is the dip in open rates.
What
one needs to understand is with this tabs feature, Google is not trying to stop
promotional email; rather they want a cut of the action. The fact that Google
has put its new email like Ads in the promotional tab means they want, intend
and indeed need users to go to the promotional tab.
The
initial research by NetGains Technologies, considering only a few weeks’ worth
of opens, projected that open
rates took a hit. Later,
after considering months’ worth of various kind of engagement data, precisely 2.9
million emails, 0.49 million opens, 0.42 million clicks, and 43.5 K
unsubscribes to figure out how Gmail’s tabs are affecting open rates, the conclusion
is that Gmail’s tabbed inbox is working as intended and Open rates have definitely
taken a plunge of 1% from 13% to 12 %.
Open Rate Change after Gmail Tabs’
launch
Opens
This data represents a 25-week
period from May to October.
Open rate change w.r.t other Email Service Providers
Opens
from Gmail subscribers have fallen off nearly twice as much as any other Email
service providers like yahoo, hotmail etc.
Reversely,
during holidays, the user’s inbox gets inundated with emails especially the
promotional emails. Most of the users unsubscribe during these periods. This
practice has been reduced by Gmail users ever since the tabs have been
introduced.
Gmail’s opens are down, the click
rate is neutral, but unsubscribes haven’t gone up.
Too early to conclude
At
first glance, it looks like the introduction of the tabbed inbox caused a
considerable decrease in the number of Gmail opens but there are
non-supporters, which include Gmail apps on mobile, popular clients such as
Apple Mail and desktop/webmail clients that import Gmail messages, such as
Outlook and Yahoo.
Moreover,
at this point there is no clarity about:
·
What
percentage of users around the world now have access to Gmail Tabs on either
the Web interface or a Gmail mobile app?
·
How
many Gmail users may have turned off or
disabled or removed Tabs and gone back to other inbox formats, such as Priority
or an unfiltered inbox
Open
rates do provide a view of email marketing campaign impact. However, open rates
are not strong and sole indicator of commercial success and they are not
directly proportional to conversion at all. To really understand if your
activity has been impacted check your conversion and revenue metrics, look at
whether the revenue per Gmail subscriber per month changes.
If you can’t check your revenue
then check your click rate. Some email platforms provide a report out of the
box to segment campaign performance by domain.
Ultimately,
the effect Gmail’s new inbox has on your email marketing
depends on the relationship you have with your subscribers.
We’re beginning to see changes in
Gmail subscriber engagement, but it's not clear yet how much of this is being
driven by Tabs.
For
Short term, promotional emails may be opened less, but for long term, it would prove
to be win-win for both Gmail users and marketers.
- Overview
- Warm up period
- Sample Mailer Design
- Common Email Marketing Mistakes
- Email Deliverability Best Practices
- Best practices for Bulk Mail
