The Fight For Email Delivery: Gmail Tabs & What To Do About It

If you’ve been building an email list for longer than a few months, I’m sure you’ve noticed something recently.

You’ve noticed a sudden drop in open rates.

At first, I thought it was just a bad period—a week of low open rates happens from time to time.

Fast forward another week or two, and I realized that Gmail has changed. Google thought it would be a good idea to segment your emails for you. Now, all emails are automatically placed into one of three categories.

The first is primary. This is the main email folder where all important and personal emails should fall.

Next is the social folder, where mostly notifications from social media sites are placed. The last folder is where it gets ugly.

Promotions.

As you can imagine, people tend to pay less attention to emails in the ‘Promotions’ category and more to those in the primary inbox.

If you’re subscribed to a lot of email lists, you’ll have several hundred emails per month fall into the promotions inbox, and maybe a few dozen in the primary folder.

For some consumers, this is great. It saves them from having to unsubscribe from email lists they don’t want to be subscribed to anymore. For marketers, however, it’s bad news.

The good news is that it’s fairly simple to land in the primary folder. Right now, this segmentation is causing problems. However, if you think about it, this could be the start of something great.

An email delivery algorithm driven by engagement.

While this is just a theory, it makes sense and is sounding like a reality with what some marketers are saying. Here’s how you can land in your subscriber’s primary folder:

1. Get Higher Open Rates

When you have high open rates, it only makes sense that Google delivers your emails to the primary folder. After all, people want to read them, so they must be important. Getting high open rates comes down to intriguing subject lines that spike your subscriber’s curiosity. Start playing around with subject lines, get creative, and work towards getting high open rates. As you gain momentum, your emails will land in the primary folder more, and your open rates will skyrocket.

2. Encourage Interaction

This algorithm idea is all about interaction. Clicks will boost your “primary rank,” and so will getting replies to your emails. These interactions show Google that your emails are popular. Popularity means importance, and importance means high primary deliverance.

3. Have Your Subscribers Move Your Emails To The Primary Folder

You can also ask your subscribers to move your emails from the promotions folder into their primary folder. It’s as simple as dragging and dropping your email from the promotions folder to the primary.

When you do this, Google asks if you’d like to do this for all future emails. If you click yes, all future emails from this sender will arrive in the primary folder. The more emails that land in the primary folder, the better your score, and the more people will open your emails.

So how do you do this?

Paul Fredrick created this image, which he sent out to his subscribers in an email. You can do the same or simply send written instructions.

That’s all there is to it.

If your open rates have taken a sudden dive, send out an email with an image like the one above immediately. I think it’s not a bad idea to send out an email like this every couple of months, depending on your results.

You could also add the image/instructions on the thank you/success page subscribers land on after they join your list.

Ultimately, these steps don’t take a lot of effort, and they’re very effective. Nobody likes change, especially when Google messes with your marketing; but it’s an ongoing process. Just keep adapting.

In Prosperity,

David Wood

P.S. Leave me your thoughts, comments, and questions below.

Comments

Bill H.

October 9, 2013

This change from Gmail has really messed with my open rates. I used to get around 30% on my email lists, but now it’s dropped to 18%. I’m going to try the suggestions here, and hopefully, it’ll improve things.

Amy G.

This post was really helpful! I’ve been struggling with Gmail’s tabs for months, and your suggestions are exactly what I needed. Thanks so much for sharing these tips!

Lucas P.

Are these tips actually effective? I find it hard to believe just asking subscribers to move emails will make such a big difference. Do you have any data or proof that this works?

Mia R.

Quick question—what’s your take on other email service providers besides Gmail? Should I be doing something similar for other platforms like Yahoo or Outlook?

Jacob W.

While I appreciate the tips, I have to disagree on one point. Simply asking subscribers to move emails seems a bit pushy to me. There has to be a more subtle way to get better open rates.

Emily T.

Hey David, it’s been a while since we last talked! I found this post while looking for ways to improve my email campaigns, and I’m glad I did. Let’s catch up soon. How have you been?

Ethan S.

I’ve had a similar issue with Gmail’s promotion tabs. I run a small business, and my emails keep getting pushed there, which hurts my sales. Your tips are exactly what I need to try to fix this!

Nina J.

For those looking for other tools to help with email deliverability, I highly recommend checking out Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign. Both offer features to improve open rates.

Oscar F.

This post was a game changer for me! I never thought about asking subscribers to move emails into the primary folder. Now I see why my open rates were dropping. Thank you for sharing this!