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How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

blog.mailchimp.com

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Re: How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

#111

Post by kbenson »

comex wrote: post #88
kbenson wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because it comes from Mailchimp and/or includes an obvious unsubscribe link doesn't mean it's not spam. No, but it's VASTLY more likely not to be (if the unsubscribe link is real and working). > There are countless sites whose default behaviour goes like this: > * require an email address to create an account to use their service > * without stating this, automatically assume that they now have permission to s…

> If you really want to not be contacted for a promotion from a company, put your money where your mouth is and choose services where their business plan doesn't require pestering you to use them more. Why should I have to? Promotional mail is not like banner ads that a site may be depending on for most of its revenue (and many people are comfortable filtering those out despite that); it's just an annoying extra, whi…

> as a user, I am perfectly within my rights to automatically classify it into its own section

Of course you are. That was meant as a call to arms. If people want less commercial email, supporting businesses that make that a priority is the first step.

Complaining publicly about unwanted behavior in commercial companies and then continuing to use the services of those companies when alternatives exist (which they may not always) is hypocritical. OTOH, complaining to the companies about those practices is beneficial.

Re: How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

#112

Post by mindcrime »

cloudwalking wrote: post #77
dangrossman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't consider language/framework/library group lists, local developer groups/meetups, security/vuln announcement lists, and my family's discussion list to be promotional. But they can all be sent through MailChimp and other services that also send promotional mails.

I suspect Gmail is filtering based on content, not based on email service.

Well they're not doing a very good job of it. I disabled this tabbed nonsense right away, because the categorization is shit. They put all sorts of messages under "promotions" that were nothing of the sort, and same for "social". In fact, glancing through the tabs, there really appeared to be almost no coherence whatsoever between what appeared in one tab or another.

As far as I'm concerned, Gmail tabs are totally useless.

Re: How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

#113

Post by pjmlp »

diminoten wrote: post #94

Off topic, but does anyone else here think the UI for the new tabs is god-awful? I wish they could become custom labels, and be treated as such. I feel like the fact that they're now explicitly tabs is a compromise that allows a marketer to still get the user's attention without filling up the "inbox" with what might be considered spam.

Yes, the minute I saw it I disabled everything back to the old UI.

At home I use an IMAP client anyway.

Re: How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

#114

Post by kbenson »

smackfu wrote: post #104
kbenson wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because it comes from Mailchimp and/or includes an obvious unsubscribe link doesn't mean it's not spam. No, but it's VASTLY more likely not to be (if the unsubscribe link is real and working). > There are countless sites whose default behaviour goes like this: > * require an email address to create an account to use their service > * without stating this, automatically assume that they now have permission to s…

>choose services where their business plan doesn't require pestering you to use them more. You usually only find out they are spammers after you sign up though? At which point, even if I leave the service, I still have to deal with the spam.

If they are a real company that you wanted a service from, they aren't "spammers". At worst, they are irresponsible with their unsubscribe functionality. Legit companies that actually spam don't last long. The laws are explicit and harsh. The network operators and spam list maintainers are even harsher. If you are signing up for services for non-legit companies online then you've got bigger problems than I can address here.

In short, stop using SPAM to mean "unwanted promotional email from a company I signed up with and have or have had in the recent past a business relationship with." They aren't the same thing, and don't deserve the same response.

Re: How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

#115

Post by buro9 »

dugmartin wrote: post #108
dmgrow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thus far we have seen our transactional emails also going to Promotions, as well as our standard marketing emails. This could be both good and bad. Bad because as you mention, the user won't see it immediately even if they requested it. Good because if the user actually uses and likes your service, they may start to take those transactional emails to their Priority inbox which could train it to also respect the marke…

I'm using Mandrill to send out my transactional email. I'm hoping this change doesn't force me to get back into the mail server business - that is something I gladly pay to outsource.

Exactly my concern.

Transactional email deliverability is more important than marketing emails to me. If needs must, I'll host my own again... but I really like not managing email servers and fighting blacklists.

Re: How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

#116

Post by warfangle »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #45
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people think that their special snowflake of a spam is the one that users actually want to see. These people deserve to be tasered in the mouth repeatedly, but sadly that hasn't happened yet.

I don't understand this attitude; every email sent through services like MailChimp contains an explicit and obvious unsubscribe link, and their policies regarding unsolicited email are pretty strict. If you don't want to receive these emails, then unsubscribe - or, better yet, don't subscribe in the first place. This new feature seems excruciatingly pointless anyway. I want all of my emails to arrive into my inbox, w…

I've begun signing up for services using sub-account-names, e.g., myaddress+someservice@gmail.com.

I can easily figure out who's spamming me, and who's sold my email address to others (or, perhaps, has been compromised and my passwords should be changed -- or the existence of the account rethought).

Re: How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

#117

Post by pbreit »

Ricapar wrote: post #16

For some reason, this paragraph irked me more than it should have: If the subscriber has tabs but they didn’t opt to include the Promotions tab, Gmail will deliver to Primary instead. That’s good news. Other than that, we’re definitely testing the new inbox and trying to figure out how it works. My sense is that Gmail wants all marketing email to go to the Promotions tab. Even if we did find a tricky way into the Pri…

I think you mis-read it. The author was implying that there's little use in trying to hack your way into the inbox since Google would probable figure it out quickly. MailChimp is overly conservative on stuff like this.

Re: How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

#118

Post by qwerty_asdf »

pepve wrote: post #98
cmwelsh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email providers such as Google send a ping to the sender letting them know who is marking their messages as spam.

Where do I find out more about this? A quick web search didn't yield anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003

There are laws regulating e-mail solicitations. People can be sued for SPAM, and incur criminal charges. Basically, if any mail provider notices that lots of its users complain about SPAM, they have legal standing to bring that person before a judge. Sending out a warning of possible legal repercussions is the first step.

Presumably, the spammer is contacted via e-mail with a strongly worded message, since it's very clear that they have the ability to interact via e-mail.

In theory, you as an individual, could run your own mail server, and if you received spam, you could threaten to sue or press charges. At some point before you actually do that though, you'd probably try to contact the person first. When cmwelsh uses the word "ping", that's just a euphemism for making contact, and not a specific technical term of any kind.

Re: How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

#119

Post by cm2012 »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #82
ErikHuisman wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do this using Mailchimp and have a suspicious high unsubscribe / marked as spam rate your account will be suspended.

How does Mailchimp monitor spam marking rates? Generally, if it's a trade secret.

Mailchimp is also known to be extremely strict with this in regards to competitors.

Re: How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

#120

Post by notatoad »

jmduke wrote: post #17

I really liked the idea of the new inbox at first but right now its overzealousness with the Promotions tab is tempting me to merge everything back into Primary. Daily VC news emails are not promotions; digests of roguelike updates are not promotions; emails from my grandmother to try a brownie recipe aren't promotions (well, I guess they sorta are.) (Yes, you can train it to send emails from X@Y.Z to primary by defa…

do you have the updates tab turned on? my inbox is pretty good about filing digests and updates under the 'updates' tab and actual marketing under the promotions tab.

it works really great for my usage, where the primary tab is the only one that makes my phone beep. i want to read brownie recipes from grandma and digests of bad updates, but not immediately. Gmail does a great job of sorting out things you need to be notified of into the primary tab, and putting other things in the other tabs.

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