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How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

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

#151

Post by eli »

minimax wrote: post #53
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…

As a GMail user, if you drag an email from the Promotions tab to the Primary tab, it will ask you if you want future messages from the sending address to go to Primary. This is the right way to do it. Users should be in charge of categorizing their email, not marketers.

But I already had everything working the way I wanted and then GMail randomly decided some (but not all) of the newsletters and automated message I get belong in a new tab.

There was no way to decline this change and no obvious way to opt out. (Yes, you can go into the settings and delete all the tabs except Primary -- not intuitive.)

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

#152

Post by astral303 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #130
astral303 wrote: post #121

This is yet another reason why you need to look past e-mail for personalized communication with your customers. Personalized messaging inside your web site or app is much more effective for certain use cases. Are you e-mailing your users to tell them about a new feature? Why not show them an in-app message instead, when they are logged on and engaged? Are you e-mailing a custom offer to a certain segment of your user…

The use case and purpose of email marketing is totally different from in-app messaging. Email drives return visits; in-app messaging drives conversions. Edit to add analogy: it's like saying JCrew does not need to send catalogs because they have great signage in their stores.

Yes, they are fairly different, but there is a fair amount of crossover. Specifically, much of the crossover is there because the state of the art in marketing automation in e-mail is much higher than outside of it. It's much easier for a marketing person to work with an e-mail marketing automation system. Implementing targeted in-app messaging campaigns, on the other hand, typically requires development team cycles (not with us though).

But I'll run with your analogy. JCrew can send me a targeted 20% off coupon, for example because I am a store cardholder or it's my birthday month. However, the purpose of that coupon is not solely to drive return visits. I might frequently stop by a JCrew while in a mall to look at merchandise, but I might be much more likely to convert if I knew I had a coupon.

However, when I am actually at JCrew in a mall, JCrew won't have signage with my coupon and won't recognize it's my birthday. It sure would be nice though.

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

#153

Post by eli »

sp332 wrote: post #69

They should be glad for the Promotions tab. Now that promotional emails aren't gumming up my primary inbox, I'm much less likely to unsubscribe from them. I don't mind having coupons for stores I rarely visit, or newsletters for projects I'm vaguely interested in, since I don't have to deal with them every time I open my mail.

I see where you're coming from, but I sure would have preferred if GMail asked me if this was something I wanted rather than just forcing it on me.

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

#154

Post by snogglethorpe »

bifrost wrote: post #22
aet wrote: post #9

This is off-topic, but if people don't like ads, why don't they just use Gmail with POP3 or IMAP?

Because then there's basically no reason to use GMail, it has no value add without the UI.

Even without the UI, gmail is free email storage of fairly large capacity, which is also extremely reliable, accessible, fast, professionally-backed-up, and unlikely to go out of business any time soon...

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

#155

Post by eli »

_delirium wrote: post #150
eli wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's spam, then it belongs in the spam folder, not in any part of my inbox. If it's not spam, I want it in my inbox; that's why I'm subscribed to the list.

I actually like the in-between category. When Chase sends me some miscellaneous offer email, it's not spam per-se, because I'm a Chase customer, so we have a preexisting relationship. I also haven't specifically opted out, although I don't recall opting in , so it's not a mail I have specifically asked for. Either way, it's not important email that I really want to see immediately. It's perfectly fine to file it into…

I already use GMail's Priority Inbox to separate "Important" from "Not Important" messages. It works pretty well and with the split screen view it's not that big a deal if it miscategorizes something.

It's the same with the Updates tab. I get that Facebook and Twitter are really noisy. But I want the updates I'm currently getting to go in my inbox. That's why I haven't unsubscribed from them.

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

#156

Post by srathi »

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…

My primary gripe with the new tabs is that the 'unread message count' is not displayed on each tab and I've to go to each of them every time to see if something new has popped up.

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

#157

Post by sp332 »

eli wrote: post #153
sp332 wrote: post #69

They should be glad for the Promotions tab. Now that promotional emails aren't gumming up my primary inbox, I'm much less likely to unsubscribe from them. I don't mind having coupons for stores I rarely visit, or newsletters for projects I'm vaguely interested in, since I don't have to deal with them every time I open my mail.

I see where you're coming from, but I sure would have preferred if GMail asked me if this was something I wanted rather than just forcing it on me.

"Forcing" is a bit much. When it is rolled out to a user, there is a popup asking which tabs the user wants to enable. It's technically opt-out, but it's literally one click (no digging through menus) to say "I don't want this."

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

#158

Post by _delirium »

eli wrote: post #155
_delirium wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually like the in-between category. When Chase sends me some miscellaneous offer email, it's not spam per-se, because I'm a Chase customer, so we have a preexisting relationship. I also haven't specifically opted out, although I don't recall opting in , so it's not a mail I have specifically asked for. Either way, it's not important email that I really want to see immediately. It's perfectly fine to file it into…

I already use GMail's Priority Inbox to separate "Important" from "Not Important" messages. It works pretty well and with the split screen view it's not that big a deal if it miscategorizes something. It's the same with the Updates tab. I get that Facebook and Twitter are really noisy. But I want the updates I'm currently getting to go in my inbox. That's why I haven't unsubscribed from them.

It could be that Gmail is optimizing for the lazy of us. That's my view on the Updates tab as well: I have unsubscribed from a bunch of this stuff, but I keep getting more of it, sometimes from new sources, sometimes from existing sources but new accounts, and other times from existing sources who have added new kinds of notifications my previous opt-out doesn't respect. At some point I gave up fiddling with it and just got used to the x# sequence (default Gmail keybindings for select-and-delete). Gmail putting it into its own tab is a net improvement in user experience for me, because now I can xjxjxjxjx# all at once. I might even give a brief glance at the subject lines, so they aren't necessarily useless. But I don't need to read them as emails, and I don't need them interspersed with my real email. Conceptually they aren't really emails, but an email serialization of a status update, like what you find under the little red number icon in Facebook. So I like them being shown as such, in a separate space.

It's all filters I could have set up myself, but the default filtering pretty closely aligns with my preferences, so for me at least it's working. And so far, Google has actually never moved out of my Inbox any email where I've opted in to receive the email. The only things getting filtered are things I never asked for.

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

#159

Post by eli »

sp332 wrote: post #157
eli wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see where you're coming from, but I sure would have preferred if GMail asked me if this was something I wanted rather than just forcing it on me.

"Forcing" is a bit much. When it is rolled out to a user, there is a popup asking which tabs the user wants to enable. It's technically opt-out, but it's literally one click (no digging through menus) to say "I don't want this."

Now I wish I took a screenshot, but I do not recall any "I don't want this" button when it hit my inbox.

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

#160

Post by eli »

_delirium wrote: post #158
eli wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already use GMail's Priority Inbox to separate "Important" from "Not Important" messages. It works pretty well and with the split screen view it's not that big a deal if it miscategorizes something. It's the same with the Updates tab. I get that Facebook and Twitter are really noisy. But I want the updates I'm currently getting to go in my inbox. That's why I haven't unsubscribed from them.

It could be that Gmail is optimizing for the lazy of us. That's my view on the Updates tab as well: I have unsubscribed from a bunch of this stuff, but I keep getting more of it, sometimes from new sources, sometimes from existing sources but new accounts, and other times from existing sources who have added new kinds of notifications my previous opt-out doesn't respect. At some point I gave up fiddling with it and j…

A more cynical view is that under the banner of Promotions, Google is more easily able to get away with putting ads directly in your inbox: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57594819-93/google-starts-p...
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