Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

blog.mailchimp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 223 posts

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

#181

Post by ricardobeat »

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…

Maybe you should re-read that? They are saying they won't try to trick gmail into bypassing the Promotions filter. This is probably in response to customers asking them to do that.

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

#182

Post by Silhouette »

kbenson wrote: post #176
Silhouette wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have a business relationship with a company and you have not told them to not email you, the email is not entirely unsolicited, and thus not spam. If you gave them your e-mail address obviously for another purpose (for example, as an account ID, or to receive a confirmation message when your order is dispatched or your card is charged) and they then use it for general marketing then that's so clearly an abus…

The problem is, the line of what's acceptable communication is different for every user. Some users want NO communication, others was service outage notices, still others may want to know about new features or enhancements that may benefit them (or may appreciate the notice, even if they didn't have a preference). Additionally it's impossible to know who will benefit from feature announcements/promotions. Does that m…

The problem is, the line of what's acceptable communication is different for every user.

Sure it is, but some things are the wrong side of that line for most users. That's why there are laws against them.

Does that mean everyone needs to deal with no email communication by default just because a few people feel it's too hard to find a (legally required) opt-out link in the first email they receive?

As I said, if you're worried enough that you aren't willing to ask people to opt in instead, you're probably a spammer.

"Dealing with no email communication by default" is not what we're talking about. No-one here is saying you shouldn't send e-mails for the purpose that someone actually gave you their address, for example.

If you actually meant "dealing with no marketing email communication by default" then I'm pretty sure most people would "deal with" that just fine. When was the last time you heard someone complain that they didn't get spammed enough today, or their browsing experience was suffering from not having enough ads cluttering the pages they wanted to read?

This isn't a conversation about "SPAM"

I'm pretty sure it is. It's right there in the quote from the article in the first post of this thread, and in numerous further posts between there and here.

But that's begging the question

No, it wasn't. If I'd written "If you want to send people marketing messages that they don't want, you're a spammer", that would indeed have been a tautology. But I left you another option, finding out whether they want them or not by asking first.

In the end, is it really so hard to see how a company acts in it's correspondence before vilifying it?

No, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a company that specialises in sending bulk e-mail discussing the possibility of actively circumventing measures intended to stop users having to read marketing mails they don't want. Again, it's right there in the quotation at the top of this thread.

(Your other examples weren't unreasonable, but they also clearly weren't marketing mail assuming they related to people actually using the service you were sending the information about.)

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

#184

Post by ProblemFactory »

dangrossman wrote: post #75
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 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.

Mailing lists are supposed to be filtered into the Updates or Forums tab, depending on whether they are computer-generated or sent by humans.

You can drag the first few emails into the appropriate tab to teach Gmail to do the same for future messages.

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

#185

Post by ProblemFactory »

furilo wrote: post #87

Hacker News audience, developers or/and internet workers population in general are very sensitive to commercial newsletters. There are lots of comments that read "commercial newsletters = spam". But reality is that for many online businesses email is the primary sales channel or a very important one. Lots of commercial newsletters are sent, but they main reason for this is because they work. Plain and simple. Lots of…

Commercial newsletters are not a problem - and having tabs for Promotions and Updates made them more friendly.

This way, users can review and maybe-read the newsletters once a week, instead of having them mixed with actually urgent emails from their family and "server is down" alerts.

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

#186

Post by joeblau »

glesica wrote: post #52

"For marketers who are trying to establish a personal relationship with their customers..." Isn't that kind of an oxymoron? How can the relationship be "personal" when one side of it (the marketer's side) is really just algorithmically-generated (and by that I do not necessarily mean "computer-generated") and the conversation is one-way?

I had the exact same sentiment when I read that line. If marketers were typing each email instead of doing a generic name substation, then I could understand this, but they aren't.

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

#187

Post by ProblemFactory »

eli wrote: post #160
_delirium wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Perhaps, but having filtered tabs for Promotions, Updates, Social and Forums is fantastic.

Most of the time when checking email, I only want to know if something urgent and personal has come up. I can read the mailing lists and newsletters once a week when bored.

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

#188

Post by joeblau »

jmduke wrote: post #58
glesica wrote: post #52

"For marketers who are trying to establish a personal relationship with their customers..." Isn't that kind of an oxymoron? How can the relationship be "personal" when one side of it (the marketer's side) is really just algorithmically-generated (and by that I do not necessarily mean "computer-generated") and the conversation is one-way?

To give an example, pretend I'm a coffeeshop with a MailChimp list of ~200 subscribers. 1. I send out an email to my subscribers saying "Hey, what do you guys want to see improved with your Uptown Coffee experience?" 2. Customers respond with responses ranging from things like "cheaper coffee lol" to "I really like the atmosphere but I get frustrated because sometimes there isn't anywhere to sit!" 3. I can respond pe…

To me an email survey is not personal. If you actually wrote an email to me, saying "Hey Joe, I see that you're doing x, y and z. What can I do to make your experience better?" which is written to me for me and not generic, that's establishing a relationship. I've gotten a hand written card from Fab.com founder Jason Goldberg which I've kept because that is personal.

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

#190

Post by jfb »

kbenson wrote: post #111
comex wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't think it's so much "hypocritical" as "ineffective". I would have said "pointless", but venting spleen can be a healthy and enjoyable pastime.
Post reply on HN