Google recently introduced a tab feature that categorizes emails in users’ Gmail inboxes automatically. The feature has raised concerns that promotional and even some editorial newsletters will experience reduced visibility, as messages are taken out of the primary inbox and filed under subfolders for emails categorized as Promotions, Social, Updates or Forums. A look at [a]list daily staff Gmail accounts today showed that the newsletter is getting classified as a “promotional” email.
Matthew Grove of newsletter distribution platform MailChimp wrote a blog post on the subject after looking at the “open rate” of billions of emails sent to Gmail.
“What bothers me in this case is that open rates stayed down for three consecutive weeks,” Grove wrote in his blog. “From looking at a year and a half’s worth of data, I can say that kind of behavior isn’t normal.”
Google responded by noting that the feature has opt-in functions built in for users to decide what they see.
Google said, “If you prefer another inbox style, you can choose from any of the four inbox options or even customize the new inbox by dragging and dropping messages to different tabs or electing to have certain senders always get sorted into a particular tab.”
For [a]list daily readers who prefer Gmail – more than a quarter of you at last count – please make sure to check your Promotions tab if you haven’t been seeing the newsletter.
Source: GigaOM
