{"id":284,"date":"2010-09-10T03:14:31","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T03:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/samwebman.wordpress.com\/?p=283"},"modified":"2010-09-10T03:14:31","modified_gmt":"2010-09-10T03:14:31","slug":"gmails-priority-index-impact-email-marketing-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intentrust.com\/?p=284","title":{"rendered":"Gmail&#8217;s Priority Index impact Email Marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>On August 30, 2010, Google announced that it is launching a new  mailbox priority system within its Gmail email platform called \u201cPriority  Inbox\u201d. This brings Gmail more in line with the recent launch of  Hotmail\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/explore.live.com\/windows-live-hotmail-sweep-junk-using\" target=\"blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sweep<\/a> functionality that was announced in late July. It also continues the  trend by the anti-spam and ISP industry to move to a more  relevancy-based reputation and filtering model. The new system is still  in beta but will be available to all customers by the end of the week.<\/p>\n<p>Priority Inbox provides users with even more control of the email  they receive and how it is viewed in their inbox. The new Gmail inbox  will be broken down into 3 basic sections:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Important and Unread:<\/strong> Contains one-to-one communications and messages that recipients interact with the most.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Starred:<\/strong> Messages that Gmail users have specifically marked as Starred and intend to come back to at a later time.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Everything Else:<\/strong> Contains messages that users have  not interacted with or that are deemed less important by Gmail\u2019s system.  Gmail users can train the system manually by marking messages as  \u201cImportant\u201d or \u201cNot Important\u201d and\/or rely on Gmail\u2019s system to  determine how to filter messages based on the users\u2019 previous actions  with those messages.\u00a0 This means Gmail will be using data from user  interactions with individual messages and senders to determine how Gmail  recipients most likely want their emails filtered going forward.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For more information on Gmail\u2019s Priority Inbox, please see the official Google blog announcement below:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/googleblog.blogspot.com\/2010\/08\/email-overload-try-priority-inbox.html\">http:\/\/googleblog.blogspot.com\/2010\/08\/email-overload-try-priority-inbox.html<\/a><\/p>\n<h2>What does this mean for email marketers?<\/h2>\n<p>The industry has been pushing email marketers to drive relevancy and  user engagement in their marketing programs for quite some time. This is  even more critical now because the way a user perceives your email or  interacts with it will directly determine how or if the user sees your  messages in their inbox in the future.<\/p>\n<p>Think of it as a filter for mail that is not spam, but is also not  important enough to the recipient for them to take an immediate action  to ensure it remains easily visible to them.<\/p>\n<h2>What should you do to mitigate the possible negative impact on your messaging?<\/h2>\n<p>It\u2019s important to continue to follow best practices, or start now if you  are not currently, because the same principles will apply to Gmail\u2019s  Priority Inbox placement that apply to good delivery and inbox  penetration among all ISPs \u2013 you will simply have to be better at it. If  ISPs are heavily monitoring customer interaction with your messages,  then you have to work harder to engage your subscribers. Make sure you  are sending email that your customers want to open and look forward to  receiving.<\/p>\n<p>However, there are a few important action items you should take to optimize your emails for Gmail\u2019s new inbox priority system:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<h3>\n<li>Optimize your subject lines and snippet\/pre-header text<\/li>\n<\/h3>\n<p>In addition to your subject line, Gmail displays the first few words of  your message depending on the length of your subject line \u2013 about 70  characters total.\u00a0 This means that your snippet text, also known as a  pre-header, is just as important as your subject line in getting your  subscribers\u2019 attention because it will be the text displayed in the  Gmail inbox immediately following your subject line.<\/p>\n<h3>\n<li>Incorporate unique calls to action for Gmail users.<\/li>\n<\/h3>\n<p>While asking subscribers to add your sending address to their contact  lists is a good idea across all email platforms, it\u2019s especially  important for Gmail users, to ensure that your message reaches the inbox  in the first place, let alone the Priority Inbox.\u00a0 Additionally,  consider Priority Inbox users\u2019 ability to \u201cstar\u201d messages to read at a  later time, and suggest that they do so for messages that are long in  nature and require more time to read.\u00a0 Not only will you improve your  reputation with Gmail, you\u2019ll build more trust with your subscribers.<\/p>\n<h3>\n<li>Pay attention to keywords<\/li>\n<\/h3>\n<p>The Gmail algorithm will use frequently used keywords included in the  copy of your emails to determine the importance of your message. For  image-heavy emails, create a version that incorporates HTML text to  ensure that your message is crawled properly, and be sure to add the  appropriate keywords in your image alt tags to describe the images you  are using.\u00a0 Treat your email copy as you would a page on your website  that you\u2019re trying to optimize for search engines, and if you have  someone on your team that specializes in SEO, it might be a good idea to  consult with him\/her when drafting your messages.<\/p>\n<h3>\n<li>Avoid \u201cbatch and blast\u201d emails<\/li>\n<\/h3>\n<p>While this best practice has been encouraged for quite a long time, it  is more important than ever to send the right messages to the right  people at the right time.\u00a0 Use advanced segmentation and lifecycle  messaging tools to identify your most engaged subscribers and target  them with highly relevant messaging to ensure high open rates.\u00a0 You  might end up sending less email, but you will improve your reputation  with Gmail (and other ISPs) as a result \u2013 which will ultimately increase  the effectiveness of your email campaigns and drive greater ROI.<\/p>\n<h3>\n<li>Always be optimizing<\/li>\n<\/h3>\n<p>This goes for all of your subscribers, but it will be increasingly  important to revisit your email marketing tactics over time and make  necessary changes according to your engagement metrics.\u00a0 What subject  lines and\/or snippet text performed best?\u00a0 What types of messages in  general are you seeing higher engagement with? Do you see any trends  that may have resulted from keyword optimization?\u00a0 Be sure to segment  your Gmail subscribers and keep a close eye on their level of engagement  separately \u2013 you may want to create separate versions of your emails  for this group depending on their behaviors.<\/ol>\n<p>We encourage you not to look at this as a negative change in the  community or an additional hurdle for email marketing success. Instead,  look at this as a great opportunity to set your brand and email  marketing apart from your competitors and raise yourself to the top of  your customers\u2019 \u201cImportant\u201d mail. If you do this successfully, this  change will have nothing but positive impacts on your email marketing  program because there will be less noise from fewer messages to compete  for your subscribers\u2019 limited attention span<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Reference from: http:\/\/www.bluehornet.com\/articles\/full\/gmail-priority-inbox<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On August 30, 2010, Google announced that it is launchi &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.intentrust.com\/?p=284\" class=\"more-link\">\u95b1\u8b80\u5168\u6587<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">\u3008Gmail&#8217;s Priority Index impact Email Marketing\u3009<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[61,67],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intentrust.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intentrust.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intentrust.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intentrust.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intentrust.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.intentrust.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intentrust.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intentrust.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intentrust.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}