Episode Details

In 2013, Google rolled out “A new inbox that puts you back in control” that allowed Gmail users to split incoming emails into different tabs. Today, 1 in 5 users enable the promos tab.

It’s got a bad reputation: The promotions tab. Companies that send marketing emails are still trying to find ways out of the promos tab and into the primary tab.

Here’s today’s main takeaway:

Most companies should accept that their marketing emails are destined for the promos tab in Gmail. Instead they should focus on standing out from all the other newsletters. --and consider themselves lucky they aren’t in the spam folder.

But there is good news. If your business is willing to radically change their HTML heavy templated email strategy in favor of a personal 1-1 text based strategy, brands can find a way into the primary tab.

To get there, you need to get past two gates:

The first gate is the spam filter and your reputation scores, the second gate is the category filter in Gmail and all the different signals that help classify incoming emails.

In this two part episode we’ll walk you through the best ways to get past both of those gates.

Gmail filter classification factors
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gmail/how-gmail-sorts-your-email-based-on-your-preferences

Google has said that Gmail’s classification system is pretty complex. It uses machine learning to choose which tab to put an email based on a bunch of factors.

We’ll cover 4 main buckets over two episodes:

1. Email content What’s in the emails, html, links, content types

2. Personal actions Gmail says the most important factor in determining where an email lands in your inbox is your personal actions and preferences from that sender.

3. Sender rep The first factor they list is who the email is from. We’ll cover domain and IP reputation as well as authentication.

4. Other things in your ESP that could help you reach the inbox

1. Email content

The default tabs/categories
Gmail has 5 default tabs/categories. They provide loose definitions for both, but the titles are pretty self explanatory. 

Primary, social, promos, updates and forums. 

Still though, businesses sending marketing emails will be asking how they can bypass the promos tab and get into the primary tab.

Instead, businesses should accept that they live in the promos tab and they need to stand out from other newsletters and other onboarding emails. 

From the little bit we know about how Gmail classifies tabs, we can conclude that emails that land in the primary tab are:

• From people you know, not businesses
• Not from social network sites or forums
• Not marketing or promotional based, not newsletters or CTA emails
• Not notifications or updates or bills

That being said. There is room for marketing emails, or emails from brands in your primary inbox tab, if you treat that content from a brand like it was someone you knew and frequently communicated with.

How? Use as little HTML as possible. Write like a person to a person.

Instead of sending your email from newsletter@clearbit.com, they send it from Brad. An actual person on their growth team.

It doesn’t have a fancy HTML template with a bunch of images. It’s straight up, it’s funny, it’s helpful. It’s almost as if, despite working for a brand, this email came from someone you know.

That’s how you ge