Dive summary:
- Gmail recently changed its inbox to sort mail into different tabs, one being a tab titled "Promotional" that will house most marketing e-mails.
- Rightly so, e-mail marketers are concerned their e-mails may no longer be read if they aren't in the primary inbox; this fear has been supported by a MailChimp study that showed the open rates for marketing e-mails had fallen 1% in just six weeks.
- What this change might really mean is that e-mail recipients just change their behavior when reading promotional e-mails; rather then open them in real time with other e-mails, recipients may just read them on their own time, which could mean a higher response rate than before.
From the article:
"As Beth Becker, Partner & Lead Digital Strategist, Indigo Strategies, put it to me, 'Long term, this is going to make true engagement and community building on social platforms all the more important. If [your audience] is invested in you in some way, they will read your e-mail no matter where it is because they WANT to.' Marketers who are seeing a dip in their open rates may want to take a page out of Brogan's book and instruct their community members on how to alter their filters. But even more important is to craft e-mails your subscribers want to open."
