Email Marketing Will Be Harder --> GMail Priority Inbox

As a gmail user, I love it. As a marketer, I'm not feeling the love.

Well, the best email marketers are the ones where people put them on their priority list, right? That should be our goal.

Tina

Just means I will be advising my Gmail subscribers to add me to their priority list when they subscribe to insure they receive my emails.

No big deal.

Chris

There's a sleuth of features already in gMail that would make the life of an IMer harder; but the average user doesn't know about them and/or think about them unless they're taught by someone.

Case in point, both my Mother and Sister are avid gMail users and knew nothing about labels and/or how to color code them and/or build filters to prioritize their inboxes.

Yet, (IMHO) it should be standard practice to educate your list Members how to white-list your eMail address the moment they opt-in to your list.

PLP,
tecHead

I'm actually really looking forward to it. It's going to make my life WAY easier.

As far as email open rate goes, I'm sure it won't be an issue. Create a short video tutorial educating your subscribers on how to use the feature and ask them to "white list" you.

Matt

Be the priority

As a Gmail user, I really have interest in this new feature. Why? Just because I hate spam actions.
If you don't run Email marketing campaign with spam, this feature won't have a side effect on your marketing strategy.

No Big Deal. Always get them to reply to your messages.

Agree or Disagree? Got any questions. Just hit reply and send an email back.

If we're running gmail, the sender is automatically added to the contacts list once a question is asked by the person.

And all of the contacts mail will reach the priority inbox most of the time. If you can get them to email you back three times, it will be more than enough.

Just keep a conversation going and everything will workout fine.

Thanks for sharing this...

Here's an idea,

If gmail "predicts" which emails are "important" by
the emails a user reads and replies too...

Then you could simply say "just hit reply and tell me what you think"
(at the end of your email),

Set it up so you reply-address, posts straight to your blog
(like adsense inbox, a WP Plugin or WP settings itself)...

That way you'll get relevant blog content,
gmail prioritized (maybe) and generate repeat traffic to your blog.

Be interesting to see it all in action

- aj

Thank you all for the replies.

Like many have said, I think it all boils down to having a great relation with your list. It can certainly affect our businesses (36% of my email list are gmail addresses) but we'll see how it goes.

No matter what, we have to deal with it now.

DFL

This new Gmail priority Inbox feature only underscores the fact that you really need to build a relationship with your list, if all you do is bombard them with offers to buy this and that you'll never succeed with email marketing anyway, at least not in the long term.

It'll also help weed out... the crappy promo's etc,
so there'll be less competition if you create your relationships right...

can only wait n see i guess.

Has anyone ever looked at what percentage of their subscribers use Gmail?

Either way ... it will either raise the bar (and the ppl who quit will do so sooner) or as techead said ... no difference -- I'm in it for the long run and "I will survive ..."

Also, I doubt that many users will pay attention to this new Priority Inbox feature, many people take comfort in a familiar layout that they're at ease with, and I'm thinking that the majority will not even opt to switch over.

Some good ideas here - I like asking subscribers to
reply back to your emails as suggested by Aj Wilson
and tylerdrun.

And, in my opinion, you should always be asking
subscribers to add you to their contact lists. It's
the first thing I put in my first email to
subscribers.

Let's put it like this - it's better to ask for it
than not. Yahoo is especially noteworthy, because
many emails from marketers tend to end up in Yahoo's
spam folder, if they're not feeling the 'from' email
or domains in the email.

Gmail's move to add a Priority Inbox looks like their
way of turning the email inbox into something akin to
a personal SERP. Their own articles say that if all
the user does is use the Priority Inbox without
'training' it (by marking emails as Important, spam
etc), then Gmail will use its own importance ranking
system. In fact, that system will always be there.
'Training' it simply customizes the system.

The inbox will start working like a SERP once
Priority Inbox is switched on. This means it works
like a search engine - keywords become important (the
more you open emails with the words 'money' or
'marketing' for instance, any email that contains
those words has a higher likelihood of being
'Important') and the 'backlinks' may likely be the
emails, newsletters, notifications that get opened
more often.

So if people subscribed to John Doe's newsletter and
are using Gmail tend to open his newsletter, his will
receive priority over some newsletter that nobody
using Gmail opens.

By the way, at around the same time as the Priority
Inbox was introduced, Google also updated their Privacy
Policy.

Fabian