Email marketing is more than campaigns, numbers and analytics; it's about innovating, evolving, and revolutionizing your own industry with inventive strategies that stay ten steps ahead of everyone else. I've known about the new Gmail Tabbed Inbox for some time now, and have been keeping a close eye on not only what everyone else in the industry has been saying, but what our numbers are showing us. At an advertising and marketing agency that I contract for, we actually see the new Gmail Promotions Tab as an opportunity, not a hindrance to email marketing campaigns.
Time.com published a curious article stating "Gmail's new design could actually make e-mail marketing more effective." And we couldn't agree more.
1. Consumers are becoming more receptive to Email marketing. "According to a Forrester study published in June, consumers are becoming less likely to automatically delete most e-mail ads: 44% said they did so in 2012, compared to 59% in 2010. What's more, while 49% of survey respondents said they received too many e-mail ads in 2010, just 40% said the same last year," according to Time.com.
This is a direct result of email marketing teams becoming smarter with their email marketing campaigns. Targeting is improving, messaging is improving, and thus open rates are improving. With advanced targeting through Big Data technologies, email marketing has become more efficient than ever, and the open rates are proving this to be true.
2. Consumers are better... consumers. Consumers are smarter than ever, and as email marketing evolves and Big Data and technology advances, consumers will become shrewder. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Consumers know what they want in an email, and if email marketing teams can provide that personalized information based on each person's profile, they can increase conversions and take full advantage of their smarter clientele.
Smarter consumers also means that they are more likely to unsubscribe from your email list if they aren't interested in your message, which is far better and more telling in terms of analytics and data than if they were to simply delete or bounce off of the email. Data can be pulled from those who unsubscribe, and used to increase subscriptions in future marketing email campaigns.
3. Promotions Tab will increase engagement. Based on all of the information that we know above, I personally predict that while initially the open rate for email marketing with Gmail's new Tabbed Inbox will decrease, engagement will ultimately increase. How can I come to this conclusion when the majority of email marketing agencies are freaking out about Gmail Tabbed Inbox and the Promotions Tab? When everyone in the email marketing field is highly concerned with potential dropping open rates?
I believe this new Gmail Tabbed Inbox will promote increased engagement and increased conversions for our clients because of the way the Promotions Tab is set up. While there are Gmail users who will be less likely to check any emails under the Promotions Tab, the ones who do check that tab will be more likely to open those emails and engage with them, simply because they took the time to check them out in the first place.
Mulpuru.com suggests the tab "provides a destination for people that's not unlike getting a pile of Sunday circulars." You know that on Sunday you'll get a stream of coupons, and will spend time and effort going through them to seek out the best deals. The Promotions Tab is no different. Instead of dreading the Inbox and deleting all of those email marketing scams, your subscribers will have a different destination, thus a different mindset - the Promotions Tab. Even the name of the tab suggests not spam, but opportunity.