Editorial Articles

Earlier this year, Google launched the priority inbox for its Gmail users which sorts all e-mails into “important” and “everything else”. Hailed by Google as a time-saving filter which will help people manage their inboxes, the launch creates two challenges for e-mail marketers. First, how do we get marketing e-mails into the priority inbox? Second , do we actually even want to be in the priority inbox?

The key to getting into the priority inbox is relevance. The user is now actively teaching filters what they want to read, so every mailing should be as useful and engaging as possible. This means segmenting your lists, potentially to quite a granular level, following design and HTML best practice and cutting out irrelevant ‘blanket blasts’ to everyone. It might even mean mailing people less.

But in addition to these main tenets of e-mail marketing, there are three key points which will help your campaign stand the test of the priority inbox:

Keywords
I’m not talking about adding an “important” to every line of every e-mail but a good way to get relevant keywords into an e-mail is to include lots of html web text and avoid trapping your text as all-image builds. Your copy will be scrutinised more than ever by these filters, so keep it short, punchy and engaging.

Sender reputation
The chances are the user won’t send many e-mails to your sending address, but having them add it to their address book will help mark it out as a trusted source. Perhaps you could get them to use the send address for feedback – it means investing in a response management team to handle replies and not using noreply@yourcompany.com but an established ESP or digital agency should be able to help with this.

User Behaviour
It’s worth considering how your audience will use the priority inbox and how this will affect the content and tone of voice of your campaigns. For example, if your campaign’s aim is to communicate one message quickly and drive clicks online, it should be optimised so the user can easily scan and act upon it. If you find your users prefer to take longer to properly read your e-mails (for example it may contain lots of editorial content), then you may wish to add a “star this e-mail to read it later” call to action to your pre-header. (Having a history of being ’starred’ may also be a factor for getting into the Priority inbox in the first place).

But before you start changing your e-mail campaigns to make them Gmail- ready, bear in mind that whilst the user will check the priority e-mail first, in this folder they will be scanning things quickly and looking for things to act upon. Some marketers might find engagement easier once the user has moved on to the regular inbox.

So really, preparing for Gmail’s priority inbox is actually an exercise in being a better e-mail marketer. Smarter inboxes like this, and e-mail preference services which filter messages before they even reach the inbox, are becoming more common. It does raise the bar in terms of relevance and optimisation, but the only real losers here are ‘batch and blast’ marketers sending one message to everyone they can find in the hope that it’ll convert someone – and getting those guys out of the picture is good for everyone, right?

Elliot Ross
Senior Creative Designer, e-Dialog