Live data from Hacker News

How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

blog.mailchimp.com

91–100 of 223 posts

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

#91
As a data scientist, the lack of error bars hurts me deep inside (i.e. are these statistically significant drops?)

Nevertheless very insightful, and I appreciate the use of data as opposed to many of the anecdotal reviews of Gmail's new inbox swirling around HN these days.

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

#93

To clarify what an 'open' is in terms of this post, it's when the recipient opens an email and has remote images load or clicks a trackable link. That's the only way you can be sure an email has been opened. If you open an email but don't load images and don't click links, then it hasn't been 'opened' in the eyes of the sender. So, for instance, folks who open and delete promotional mailings without loading images do…

True, but probably not relevant to this artice. The "read" vs "loaded images/clicked link" ratio is probably the same before and after, so its exact meaning isn't important. But thanks for the clarification.

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

#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.

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

#95
post #2

Interesting, but is it really true 'normal' open rates are also only 13%? Or is this how it's measured, e.g. only including people who click 'show images', and thus load the tracking pixels?

Open rate does not include the people who view the email without images, unless those people click a link in the email.

A standard open rate (across email clients) is between 15-30%. However it's possible to consistently hit a 50-60% open rate, if you know what you are doing, basically meaning using correct techniques and content / offers that are really relevant to your recipients. BoringCo sending emails titled "March newsletter" will get 5-10% typically.

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

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seeing transactional mail like signup confirmations and password resets in the promotions tab. There are lots of lists I subscribe to that are "bulk" but not promotional as well. MailChimp has over 3 million users, and zero of them are affiliate marketers. Not all of their users' mail belongs in a promotions tab.

Indeed. To give one example, I run a weekly newsletter with JavaScript tips. That probably shouldn't be categorized as Promotions. Perhaps Social or Forums instead?

I don't see any way of getting around this that isn't just rife for abuse. I guess/hope that Gmail learns from user behavior, so if enough of them start moving the mail to the Forums list (which is what I think it should be, Social Updates implies some personal update from Facebook/Twitter/G+, not newsletters), it would automatically filter there instead.

EDIT: Also, many users might feel like Promos is the right tab. For example, Weight Watchers emails me recipes, which is a bit like a developer getting Javascript tips. This also goes in Promos, and that seems like the right place for it, even though it's useful/actionable information.

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

#97

If you don't like it, go to Settings > Inbox > change the "Inbox type". I'm already back to the one tab model. I had some important emails in promotions tab, so I can't just ignore that tab.

Were they coming from different senders? Would moving the email and/or setting up a filter not fixed this? I'm wondering what you think of as being "important" that would have ended up there. The classification for me has been very good.

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

#98
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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

#99
post #93

To clarify what an 'open' is in terms of this post, it's when the recipient opens an email and has remote images load or clicks a trackable link. That's the only way you can be sure an email has been opened. If you open an email but don't load images and don't click links, then it hasn't been 'opened' in the eyes of the sender. So, for instance, folks who open and delete promotional mailings without loading images do…

True, but probably not relevant to this artice. The "read" vs "loaded images/clicked link" ratio is probably the same before and after, so its exact meaning isn't important. But thanks for the clarification.

I figured I'd clarify the terminology as some folks in the comments here were saying things like they used to open up multiple mails and delete them as opposed to now where they just select and delete them within the Promotions tab without opening them. I wanted to ensure folks knew that this wouldn't affect the numbers the way they were expecting unless it was all from senders you'd specifically allowed remote images for.

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

#100
post #98
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.

It's called a feedback loop.

http://www.dirigodev.com/content/email-feedback-loops/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abuse_Reporting_Format

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6650

Post reply on HN