How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates(blog.mailchimp.com)

287 pointsby duck13 tahun yang lalu213 comments

blog.mailchimp.com

How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

http://blog.mailchimp.com/how-gmails-new-inbox-is-affecting-open-rates/

221 comments

Ricapar13 tahun yang lalu

For some reason, this paragraph irked me more than it should have:

   If the subscriber has tabs but they didn’t opt
   to include the Promotions tab, Gmail will deliver
   to Primary instead. That’s good news. Other than
   that, we’re definitely testing the new inbox and
   trying to figure out how it works. My sense is that
   Gmail wants all marketing email to go to the
   Promotions tab. Even if we did find a tricky way
   into the Primary tab, they’re smart over there,
   and they’d more than likely address any reasonable
   workaround.

The Promotions tab is there so I don't have to see your emails. The fact that you straight-up claim to try to bypass that makes me put you on the same level as the V1agra spammers in my mind.

I'll skim my Promotions tab when I want to. Stay out of my primary inbox.

thrownaway242413 tahun yang lalu

A lot of people think that their special snowflake of a spam is the one that users actually want to see. These people deserve to be tasered in the mouth repeatedly, but sadly that hasn't happened yet.

mhartl13 tahun yang lalu

MailChimp isn't for spam.

matthewmacleod13 tahun yang lalu

I don't understand this attitude; every email sent through services like MailChimp contains an explicit and obvious unsubscribe link, and their policies regarding unsolicited email are pretty strict.

If you don't want to receive these emails, then unsubscribe - or, better yet, don't subscribe in the first place.

This new feature seems excruciatingly pointless anyway. I want all of my emails to arrive into my inbox, with the exception of actual unsolicited spam. If I need to filter them, I can do it myself - I suppose the feature may be useful for Gmail users who aren't comfortable doing this. At least I can disable the new inbox or continue using IMAP for now.

fps13 tahun yang lalu

there are 7 billion people on the planet, and many of them pretend to be multiple people online. Am I supposed to click 10 billion unsubscribe links, most of which I've discovered are actually "subscribe me harder" links? The vast majority of mail I get from "reputable" mailers like mailchimp and constant contact is not something I ever signed up for. And those are the reputable senders that have offices and a phone number you can call. Most senders aren't using a service like that. So, "don't subscribe in the first place" is a complete bullshit solution.

Anything gmail can do to keep all manner of commercial solicitations out of my inbox is welcomed. I actually disabled the visibility of the "promotions/spam" tab, but kept the filter, and will happily never have to look at that crap again.

scholia13 tahun yang lalu

Which is fine until you end up in court (or whatever) because Google routed some important emails into your Promotions box.

My Gmail spambox already contains 40-50% legitimate emails that I have to rescue manually, so I already know I can't rely on Google filtering things properly...

JohnTHaller13 tahun yang lalu

It doesn't matter if a service contains unsubscribe links or not. ConstantContact has strict anti-spam policies and their SafeUnsubscribe(tm) links at the bottom of each email. That doesn't mean I don't regularly get spam mail via their system because yet another spammer harvested my contact information from my website. I found it easier to just block Constant Contact entirely as I don't think I've ever gotten a single requested email from them anyway using the info I posted here: http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/block_constant_contact...

I don't think I've had the same issue with MailChimp, but if I do, I'll do the same with them.

Yhippa13 tahun yang lalu

> every email sent through services like MailChimp

Unfortunately not all companies are as virtuous as MailChimp. What I've found is that despite unsubscribing various things happen like the unsubscribe link takes you to a 404 or 500 or the company doesn't actually unsubscribe you.

Why does it take "up to a week" for some companies to unsubscribe you anyway? Are the batch processes that long for something like unsubscribing? There should be some kind of global business rule that suppresses emails to non-subscribers instantly.

warfangle13 tahun yang lalu

I've begun signing up for services using sub-account-names, e.g., [email protected].

I can easily figure out who's spamming me, and who's sold my email address to others (or, perhaps, has been compromised and my passwords should be changed -- or the existence of the account rethought).

rhizome13 tahun yang lalu

It's not the company's place to decide how and whether their email gets segregated from my inbox.

thrownaway242413 tahun yang lalu

"Subscribing in the first place" almost always consists of forgetting to uncheck the "default opt-in" -- also known as opt-out, to normal people. There are also services (including Google) who unilaterally change your preferences from opted-out to opted-in.

Personally, I consider any promotional mail that was not double-opted-in (that is I had to take some affirmative action to receive a confirmation link, and then I confirmed it) to be spam. I also consider any promotional materials stapled to transactional mail to be spam. I know I am not unique in this opinion.

heyitsnick13 tahun yang lalu

>"Subscribing in the first place" almost always consists of forgetting to uncheck the "default opt-in"

Citation needed. Mail Chimp strongly recommends double-opt in, I think it's the default. I very much doubt its "almost always" single opt-in.

MortenK13 tahun yang lalu

You are right. In Mailchimp you actually can't even disable double opt-in.

gertef13 tahun yang lalu

So, opt-in is the "default opt-in" for MailChimp users...

slg13 tahun yang lalu

The problem is that there are more than two buckets. Most MailChimp type emails are not spam, but they would probably fall in the bacn category. People generally don't want to unsubscribe, but they also don't need their day interrupted in order to see the latest marketing material as soon as it arrives. That is the purpose of the promotions tab. You can ignore those semi-relevant emails until you are ready to look at them.

snogglethorpe13 tahun yang lalu

... and I find one effect of this (very nice, and seemingly quite accurate) categorization on me is that I actually end up viewing "promotional" emails in a more positive light.

Now they're not being shoved in my face, not obscuring personal email (which used to be a problem with the old single inbox: I'd miss email from my mom amongst a bunch of random low-value emails), and not sending me annoying alerts on my phone. I don't have to skip past reams of "promotions" when I want to open that email from a friend I got a few days ago. I don't think I see, or open, or "open" promotional email any more or less often than before, but now that it's more on my terms, my mood when I do so is better.

For companies that use promotional email in an honest and straight-forward manner, I suspect the net result of this change may be positive... it's not just about "opens", it's also about the impression your email makes and how that effects peoples' attitude towards your company/service.

sarreph13 tahun yang lalu

90% of the people of the internets don't seem to be able to grasp smart-filters or folders; Gmail is spoon(read: force)-feeding them a nice-looking folder system instead.

tobtoh13 tahun yang lalu

Just because it comes from Mailchimp and/or includes an obvious unsubscribe link doesn't mean it's not spam. There are countless sites whose default behaviour goes like this:

* require an email address to create an account to use their service

* without stating this, automatically assume that they now have permission to send you whatever email they want - admin emails, special offers, partner promotions etc

* assume that because they provide an unsubscribe link, those emails are automatically not spam.

It's those sites which I'm really glad Gmail automatically filters them out. Providing an email address because that's a requirement to have an account is not the same thing as giving approval to receive all your marketing and promotion spam.

ErikHuisman13 tahun yang lalu

If you do this using Mailchimp and have a suspicious high unsubscribe / marked as spam rate your account will be suspended.

thrownaway242413 tahun yang lalu

How does Mailchimp monitor spam marking rates? Generally, if it's a trade secret.

cmwelsh13 tahun yang lalu

Email providers such as Google send a ping to the sender letting them know who is marking their messages as spam.

pepve13 tahun yang lalu

Where do I find out more about this? A quick web search didn't yield anything.

dbarlett13 tahun yang lalu

It's called a feedback loop.

http://www.dirigodev.com/content/email-feedback-loops/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abuse_Reporting_Format

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6650

gertef13 tahun yang lalu

WTF? There is an IETF standard for certifying that an spam victim's email address is valid and therefore should be exploited by sending more spam?

zrail13 tahun yang lalu

I don't have actual numbers, but a cursory examination of my Gmail spam box says spam senders don't generally provide a valid List-Unsubscribe header. One of Gmail's spam triggers may in fact be, someone clicked on the List-Unsubscribe header and the FBL message bounced.

eli13 tahun yang lalu

Huh? How did you conclude that?

Tracking image loads and clicks would be a much more effective method of determining that an address is valid for both legitimate mass emails and spam.

PavlovsCat13 tahun yang lalu

Does Googlemail web client load images from random senders without asking the user first?

qwerty_asdf13 tahun yang lalu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003

There are laws regulating e-mail solicitations. People can be sued for SPAM, and incur criminal charges. Basically, if any mail provider notices that lots of its users complain about SPAM, they have legal standing to bring that person before a judge. Sending out a warning of possible legal repercussions is the first step.

Presumably, the spammer is contacted via e-mail with a strongly worded message, since it's very clear that they have the ability to interact via e-mail.

In theory, you as an individual, could run your own mail server, and if you received spam, you could threaten to sue or press charges. At some point before you actually do that though, you'd probably try to contact the person first. When cmwelsh uses the word "ping", that's just a euphemism for making contact, and not a specific technical term of any kind.

zrail13 tahun yang lalu

While that's sort of correct, there actually is a technical "ping" called an FBL message that gets sent by the big providers when someone clicks the "report spam" button.

eli13 tahun yang lalu

I don't work for Mailchimp, but it isn't that complication: Feedback loops with major email providers, monitoring bounes and engagement rates, and (of course) tracking abuse complaints. If you're sending out bona fide spam, many people will take the time to send a message to [email protected]

Among the consumer-grade ESPs, Mailchimp has a reputation for being extremely strict about anti-spam enforcement.

cm201213 tahun yang lalu

Mailchimp is also known to be extremely strict with this in regards to competitors.

[deleted]13 tahun yang lalu

kbenson13 tahun yang lalu

> Just because it comes from Mailchimp and/or includes an obvious unsubscribe link doesn't mean it's not spam.

No, but it's VASTLY more likely not to be (if the unsubscribe link is real and working).

> There are countless sites whose default behaviour goes like this:

> * require an email address to create an account to use their service

> * without stating this, automatically assume that they now have permission to send you whatever email they want - admin emails, special offers, partner promotions etc > * assume that because they provide an unsubscribe link, those emails are automatically not spam. > It's those sites which I'm really glad Gmail automatically filters them out. Providing an email address because that's a requirement to have an account is not the same thing as giving approval to receive all your marketing and promotion spam.

Well, if it's in their TOS (and on most the sites it probably is), then it probably is okay, and you have nobody to blame but yourself (as do we all). The current state isn't optimal, but it's what the public wanted. The race to low cost/free services subsidized by advertising has led to this.

If you really want to not be contacted for a promotion from a company, put your money where your mouth is and choose services where their business plan doesn't require pestering you to use them more.

edited to lighten the accusatory stance of "blame", as it didn't convey my real intent accurately

Amadou13 tahun yang lalu

Well, if it's in their TOS (and on most the sites it probably is), then it probably is okay

Just because its hidden in the fine print instead of explicitly disclosed at the point of collecting the email address does not make it "okay."

It might make it legal but that's not at all the same thing - a defense that falls back on legality means they have an adversarial relationship with that customer which generally means they've lost any future business from them. That's the last place a smart company wants their customer relationship to end up.

michaelhoffman13 tahun yang lalu

Yes. If anything that is legal is "okay," then there is no point in discussing Gmail's new inbox because that is obviously "okay" too.

scott_s13 tahun yang lalu

I call unrequested "offers" spam, even if they have a valid unsubscribe link, and even if I gave the company my email address for other purposes.

kbenson13 tahun yang lalu

Then you are most likely using the term incorrectly. When you have a business relationship with a company and you have not told them to not email you, the email is not entirely unsolicited, and thus not spam. It may be unwanted though, which is why Google is routing it to the "promotions" section. It's not necessarily spam though, which is why they don't immediately route it to the spam section.

thrownaway242413 tahun yang lalu

No, YOU are using the term as corrupted by email marketing people, and the post to which you replied is using it as sensible people use it. If I give a company my email address so I can get my receipts from them, and then I get "valuable offers" and "service announcements" from them, that's spam, plain and simple. Sure, it's legal in the USA, but that doesn't make it not spam.

Similarly, attaching promotional materials to my receipts and other transactional mail is an abuse of the relationship.

gertef13 tahun yang lalu

Are you a spammer everytime you browse a website or visit a store but don't make a purchase?

scott_s13 tahun yang lalu

Browsing is entirely different from spamming. With browsing, a store (online or offline) has opened its doors and said "Please come in! Look around, see if you want to buy something!" And we do. It's understood in this model that we are not obligated to buy something. We are browsing.

Email is a means of personal communication. I trust that when I give out my email, it will only be used for the promised purposes - such as giving me order receipts, or establishing an account. Giving out this email for one purpose is not implicit permission to use it for another purpose.

Silhouette13 tahun yang lalu

When you have a business relationship with a company and you have not told them to not email you, the email is not entirely unsolicited, and thus not spam.

If you gave them your e-mail address obviously for another purpose (for example, as an account ID, or to receive a confirmation message when your order is dispatched or your card is charged) and they then use it for general marketing then that's so clearly an abuse of trust that IMHO they deserve and should expect to be treated as a spammer.

As far as what the law says, here in Europe, you might get away with sending marketing to such addresses under PECR if you still collected the address at the time of a sale or in connection with a genuine sales enquiry. However, it's a fine line, and one mis-step in any of several conditions will put you the wrong side of the law. Also, the preceding comments relate to the specific EU anti-spamming regulations, but there are more general laws regarding harassment etc. in most jurisdictions as well.

There's a pretty simple test for your situation, really: if you want to send people marketing messages but aren't willing to ask their permission explicitly because you think they'll say no, your messages are probably spam and you're probably a spammer.

kbenson13 tahun yang lalu

The problem is, the line of what's acceptable communication is different for every user. Some users want NO communication, others was service outage notices, still others may want to know about new features or enhancements that may benefit them (or may appreciate the notice, even if they didn't have a preference). Additionally it's impossible to know who will benefit from feature announcements/promotions. Does that mean everyone needs to deal with no email communication by default just because a few people feel it's too hard to find a (legally required) opt-out link in the first email they receive?

This isn't a conversation about "SPAM", it's a conversation about companies managing customer contact responsibly, and customers responding responsibly to the contact, which in some cases means not overreacting.

> There's a pretty simple test for your situation, really: if you want to send people marketing messages but aren't willing to ask their permission explicitly because you think they'll say no, your messages are probably spam and you're probably a spammer.

But that's begging the question, since you already put the reasoning in place. What if it's as simple as testing shows that customers will overwhelmingly opt-out initially, but then there's a steady influx of evidence that customers would benefit from some level of contact (i.e. support requests that say as much, forum posts, etc), such as noting when a previously charged for service is now free, when service outages are scheduled to happen, etc.

In the end, is it really so hard to see how a company acts in it's correspondence before vilifying it?

Silhouette13 tahun yang lalu

The problem is, the line of what's acceptable communication is different for every user.

Sure it is, but some things are the wrong side of that line for most users. That's why there are laws against them.

Does that mean everyone needs to deal with no email communication by default just because a few people feel it's too hard to find a (legally required) opt-out link in the first email they receive?

As I said, if you're worried enough that you aren't willing to ask people to opt in instead, you're probably a spammer.

"Dealing with no email communication by default" is not what we're talking about. No-one here is saying you shouldn't send e-mails for the purpose that someone actually gave you their address, for example.

If you actually meant "dealing with no marketing email communication by default" then I'm pretty sure most people would "deal with" that just fine. When was the last time you heard someone complain that they didn't get spammed enough today, or their browsing experience was suffering from not having enough ads cluttering the pages they wanted to read?

This isn't a conversation about "SPAM"

I'm pretty sure it is. It's right there in the quote from the article in the first post of this thread, and in numerous further posts between there and here.

But that's begging the question

No, it wasn't. If I'd written "If you want to send people marketing messages that they don't want, you're a spammer", that would indeed have been a tautology. But I left you another option, finding out whether they want them or not by asking first.

In the end, is it really so hard to see how a company acts in it's correspondence before vilifying it?

No, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a company that specialises in sending bulk e-mail discussing the possibility of actively circumventing measures intended to stop users having to read marketing mails they don't want. Again, it's right there in the quotation at the top of this thread.

(Your other examples weren't unreasonable, but they also clearly weren't marketing mail assuming they related to people actually using the service you were sending the information about.)

kbenson13 tahun yang lalu

Please go back (quite a ways at this point) and find my response that started this thread was. It wasn't top level, it was in response to someone specifically calling out companies for sending them email after signing up. In that respect, this isn't just about spam, it's about user responses to company email communications. Please view my posts in that light if you want to accurately interpret my position.

duaneb13 tahun yang lalu

Any unsolicited company marketing email is, to me, spam. Spam is very relevant here.

duaneb13 tahun yang lalu

> The problem is, the line of what's acceptable communication is different for every user.

Make each bit opt-in. Problem solved. These emails really should be off by default.

scott_s13 tahun yang lalu

I have not told to not email me. There's a big difference between that and telling them they can email me. They take the absence of their asking as implicit permission. So I still consider it unsolicited, and it's still spam to me.

Previous time I made a similar point on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5705769

comex13 tahun yang lalu

> If you really want to not be contacted for a promotion from a company, put your money where your mouth is and choose services where their business plan doesn't require pestering you to use them more.

Why should I have to? Promotional mail is not like banner ads that a site may be depending on for most of its revenue (and many people are comfortable filtering those out despite that); it's just an annoying extra, which can always be opted out of with a few clicks anyway. But if I don't want to do that for whatever reason - perhaps I do want to receive the mail but not clutter up my regular inbox with it, perhaps I'm just lazy - as a user, I am perfectly within my rights to automatically classify it into its own section.

kbenson13 tahun yang lalu

> as a user, I am perfectly within my rights to automatically classify it into its own section

Of course you are. That was meant as a call to arms. If people want less commercial email, supporting businesses that make that a priority is the first step.

Complaining publicly about unwanted behavior in commercial companies and then continuing to use the services of those companies when alternatives exist (which they may not always) is hypocritical. OTOH, complaining to the companies about those practices is beneficial.

jfb13 tahun yang lalu

I don't think it's so much "hypocritical" as "ineffective". I would have said "pointless", but venting spleen can be a healthy and enjoyable pastime.

kbenson13 tahun yang lalu

It's hypocritical in that the use of a service by a company whose actions you publicly call out supports that company, and by extension, those actions.

smackfu13 tahun yang lalu

>choose services where their business plan doesn't require pestering you to use them more.

You usually only find out they are spammers after you sign up though? At which point, even if I leave the service, I still have to deal with the spam.

kbenson13 tahun yang lalu

If they are a real company that you wanted a service from, they aren't "spammers". At worst, they are irresponsible with their unsubscribe functionality. Legit companies that actually spam don't last long. The laws are explicit and harsh. The network operators and spam list maintainers are even harsher. If you are signing up for services for non-legit companies online then you've got bigger problems than I can address here.

In short, stop using SPAM to mean "unwanted promotional email from a company I signed up with and have or have had in the recent past a business relationship with." They aren't the same thing, and don't deserve the same response.

Dylan1680713 tahun yang lalu

The definition of spam is simple: unsolicited bulk email

It doesn't matter if I have a business relationship with the company. A 'business relationship' is what keeps them from violating the laws related to spam, but it's still spam.

Only when I purposefully and explicitly tell a company to put me on a mailing list is it not spam. If I'm making an account for other purposes it's not the same thing. If I make a purchase it's definitely not the same thing.

kbenson13 tahun yang lalu

Here's the thing, I think the CAN-SPAM act actually defined this pretty well:

    The CAN-SPAM Act defines commercial messages as those 
    that primarily advertise or promote a commercial product or 
    service. The FCC’s ban does not cover “transactional or 
    relationship” messages -- that is, notices to facilitate a 
    transaction you have already agreed to -- for example, 
    messages that provide information about your existing 
    account or warranty information about a product you’ve 
    purchased.

If you have an account with them, and it's informational, even if it's just about a new service you can take advantage on that account you already have, they can contact you about it.

If you don't want that, opt out.

If you don't like how they handled the email process, complain to the company.

If you still don't like it, stop using the service.

Anything else just means that they have no way of notifying you about anything unless you visit their site. In some cases, I sure as hell want to know if they are offering free services or other promotions. In others, I opt out.

Dylan1680713 tahun yang lalu

I very distinctly referenced the law. It defines what is legal, not what is annoying.

>If you have an account with them, and it's informational, even if it's just about a new service you can take advantage on that account you already have, they can contact you about it.

They can but they shouldn't unless I asked.

> If you don't want that, opt out.

If it's opt-out then the company loses a lot of points.

> If you don't like how they handled the email process, complain to the company.

Even better, I can warn potential customers about the way the company acts.

> If you still don't like it, stop using the service.

See above.

> Anything else just means that they have no way of notifying you about anything unless you visit their site. In some cases, I sure as hell want to know if they are offering free services or other promotions. In others, I opt out.

They can notify me all they want about the actual transactions I am performing with them, monetary or other. But when it comes to solicitation they should have a very explicit opt-in process.

kbenson13 tahun yang lalu

> They can notify me all they want about the actual transactions I am performing with them, monetary or other. But when it comes to solicitation they should have a very explicit opt-in process.

The truth is I think we are probably that far apart in what we believe is acceptable. I think that having all communications not specifically pertaining to an actual transaction on an existing account be opt-in explicitly is unworkable, but only slightly. I think it's great in theory, but that it breaks down in the face of reality and what people find they really want and find acceptable.

Really my point here is to fight back against people re-labeling "unwanted commercial emails from companies I do business with" as spam, as unwanted is not the same as unsolicited.

I've fought the real battle here; I was an admin at an ISP and maintained mail servers, dealt with spam filters, deployed new spam solutions, and had to deal with the constant misuse of the system to send spam through compromised accounts. Having people use the label of spam just to pull along the emotional reaction of the reader really seems to get me worked up.

dornab13 tahun yang lalu

Yes, I will definitely use the paid version of Facebook and Twitter next time! Unfortunately consumers don't have a choice here. Go to a paid social network that no one uses, or put up with getting spammed by pushy marketers? Somehow everyone decided that because their business model is based on advertising they should forget about good customer experience.

It's certainly not OK. Why not just have pop-ups all over your page, like the more old-school "advertising-based" websites did?

kbenson13 tahun yang lalu

> Somehow everyone decided that because their business model is based on advertising they should forget about good customer experience

Somehow everyone decided that even though companies were being annoying they would put up with it to get the service, and here we are.

My point is that complaining publicly while not changing your behavior is pointless. If enough people actually DID choose a social network that wasn't as aggressive in it's emails, not only would there then be more people on those networks, but the others would change as well.

> It's certainly not OK. Why not just have pop-ups all over your page, like the more old-school "advertising-based" websites did?

And what happened with that? People took action, and either avoided those sites or used blockers so they were ineffective. If it still worked we would see more of it.

gertef13 tahun yang lalu

You should not sign up for services that do not provide an appropriate email-send policy before signup.

lmm13 tahun yang lalu

If you're signing up for a service that sensibly uses your email for login but has no other plausible reason to send you email, how can you tell the difference at signup time between one that's going to do just what it seems like and one that's also going to send you "marketing emails"?

eli13 tahun yang lalu

If it's spam, then it belongs in the spam folder, not in any part of my inbox. If it's not spam, I want it in my inbox; that's why I'm subscribed to the list.

_delirium13 tahun yang lalu

I actually like the in-between category. When Chase sends me some miscellaneous offer email, it's not spam per-se, because I'm a Chase customer, so we have a preexisting relationship. I also haven't specifically opted out, although I don't recall opting in, so it's not a mail I have specifically asked for. Either way, it's not important email that I really want to see immediately. It's perfectly fine to file it into a "Promotions" tab: it's not spam in the sense that overseas-Viagra-pharmacy emails are spam, but it's not a regular email, like one from a colleague or my parents.

If I had been more diligent about setting up folders and email filters, of course, I would've filed these kinds of mails into their own folder already, like I already do with mailing lists. But they crop up often enough (every time you do business with a new company) that it's tedious to keep up. So I like that Google is helping me out in helping to auto-sort them.

eli13 tahun yang lalu

I already use GMail's Priority Inbox to separate "Important" from "Not Important" messages. It works pretty well and with the split screen view it's not that big a deal if it miscategorizes something.

It's the same with the Updates tab. I get that Facebook and Twitter are really noisy. But I want the updates I'm currently getting to go in my inbox. That's why I haven't unsubscribed from them.

_delirium13 tahun yang lalu

It could be that Gmail is optimizing for the lazy of us. That's my view on the Updates tab as well: I have unsubscribed from a bunch of this stuff, but I keep getting more of it, sometimes from new sources, sometimes from existing sources but new accounts, and other times from existing sources who have added new kinds of notifications my previous opt-out doesn't respect. At some point I gave up fiddling with it and just got used to the x# sequence (default Gmail keybindings for select-and-delete). Gmail putting it into its own tab is a net improvement in user experience for me, because now I can xjxjxjxjx# all at once. I might even give a brief glance at the subject lines, so they aren't necessarily useless. But I don't need to read them as emails, and I don't need them interspersed with my real email. Conceptually they aren't really emails, but an email serialization of a status update, like what you find under the little red number icon in Facebook. So I like them being shown as such, in a separate space.

It's all filters I could have set up myself, but the default filtering pretty closely aligns with my preferences, so for me at least it's working. And so far, Google has actually never moved out of my Inbox any email where I've opted in to receive the email. The only things getting filtered are things I never asked for.

eli13 tahun yang lalu

A more cynical view is that under the banner of Promotions, Google is more easily able to get away with putting ads directly in your inbox: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57594819-93/google-starts-p...

ProblemFactory13 tahun yang lalu

Perhaps, but having filtered tabs for Promotions, Updates, Social and Forums is fantastic.

Most of the time when checking email, I only want to know if something urgent and personal has come up. I can read the mailing lists and newsletters once a week when bored.

eli13 tahun yang lalu

Priority Inbox didn't work for you?

minimax13 tahun yang lalu

As a GMail user, if you drag an email from the Promotions tab to the Primary tab, it will ask you if you want future messages from the sending address to go to Primary. This is the right way to do it. Users should be in charge of categorizing their email, not marketers.

eli13 tahun yang lalu

But I already had everything working the way I wanted and then GMail randomly decided some (but not all) of the newsletters and automated message I get belong in a new tab.

There was no way to decline this change and no obvious way to opt out. (Yes, you can go into the settings and delete all the tabs except Primary -- not intuitive.)

pisarzp13 tahun yang lalu

THIS! Another quote from article: "I’ve heard a lot of people asking how they can get out of the Promotions tab and into the Primary tab."

There is a reason why I enabled Promotions tab and I don't want you'r emails! If you will end up in my Primary by tricking me I will unsubscribe immediately to not see them at all!

jbail13 tahun yang lalu

I didn't even know there was a promotions tab until reading this article. I just enabled it. It's exactly where I want marketing emails to go and am really glad to see Google innovating in this space.

(BTW, I love how Gmail will attempt to unsubscribe you when you mark a marketing email as spam, which is also very nice)

thrownaway242413 tahun yang lalu

This only works for senders with decent reputation. For borderline spam, manual markings will not trigger the unsubscribe.

cite: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/unsubscribing-made-eas...

eddieplan913 tahun yang lalu

Dear Google, can I have an ads tab in my browser so all ads get collected there? I will skim this tab when I want to, but stay out of my primary content tab.

dangrossman13 tahun yang lalu

I don't consider language/framework/library group lists, local developer groups/meetups, security/vuln announcement lists, and my family's discussion list to be promotional. But they can all be sent through MailChimp and other services that also send promotional mails.

cloudwalking13 tahun yang lalu

I suspect Gmail is filtering based on content, not based on email service.

mindcrime13 tahun yang lalu

Well they're not doing a very good job of it. I disabled this tabbed nonsense right away, because the categorization is shit. They put all sorts of messages under "promotions" that were nothing of the sort, and same for "social". In fact, glancing through the tabs, there really appeared to be almost no coherence whatsoever between what appeared in one tab or another.

As far as I'm concerned, Gmail tabs are totally useless.

fps13 tahun yang lalu

Gmail's filtering in this case seems to be 100% spot on for me. It's grabbed all the stuff I consider spam and hidden it away, and hasn't touched anything from people who I want to hear from. A few thousand messages have been properly sorted since I opted in.

mindcrime13 tahun yang lalu

Interesting. My experience has been nearly completely opposite of that. Especially in terms of "false positives" where things are being put under the "promotions" tab that aren't promotions at all. :-(

cloudwalking13 tahun yang lalu

I also really love the multiple inboxes. My inbox is significantly easier to parse.

Once in a while I drag a message elsewhere to train it, but no more than once a month...

eli13 tahun yang lalu

The contents of my Promotions tab included many things that were not promotional in nature, including -dev mailing list digests.

ProblemFactory13 tahun yang lalu

Mailing lists are supposed to be filtered into the Updates or Forums tab, depending on whether they are computer-generated or sent by humans.

You can drag the first few emails into the appropriate tab to teach Gmail to do the same for future messages.

nutmeg13 tahun yang lalu

I enjoy the format of email newsletters and several use Mailchimp. For some reason, the email newsletters I have purposefully subscribed to and want to read are going to the Promotions tab. I can see how that would be a problem.

I understand the negative reaction to the word "marketing", but anything I don't want to see shouldn't show up in my Inbox at all as it should be flagged as Spam.

ricardobeat13 tahun yang lalu

Maybe you should re-read that? They are saying they won't try to trick gmail into bypassing the Promotions filter. This is probably in response to customers asking them to do that.

andrenotgiant13 tahun yang lalu

I catch myself doing the same thing sometimes. It's easy in tech to abstract things to "metrics" and "performance" when what you're really talking about boils down to tricking users and spam filters.

pbreit13 tahun yang lalu

I think you mis-read it. The author was implying that there's little use in trying to hack your way into the inbox since Google would probable figure it out quickly. MailChimp is overly conservative on stuff like this.

ripter13 tahun yang lalu

No matter how tricky they try to be, if users move the message over to Promotions, google will know it's spam.

Ackley13 tahun yang lalu

What else can you expect from professional spammers? At least he is honest...

JohnTHaller13 tahun yang lalu

To clarify what an 'open' is in terms of this post, it's when the recipient opens an email and has remote images load or clicks a trackable link. That's the only way you can be sure an email has been opened. If you open an email but don't load images and don't click links, then it hasn't been 'opened' in the eyes of the sender. So, for instance, folks who open and delete promotional mailings without loading images don't count as opening those emails. Basically 'open' doesn't mean what you think it means in terms of the way you use your email client.

The same way 'delivered' doesn't mean what you'd think it means. You, as a user, would think it means delivered to your inbox. It doesn't. It means it was delivered to the mail server. At that point, it could go in your inbox, your 'promotions' tab in gmail, your junk/spam folder, or be automatically deleted using a set of rules on your server/email client (bayesian, rbls, etc). So, when email sending providers talk about delivery rates, that's what they really mean. They have no idea if even the subject of the email was even seen by the recipient unless that recipient either opens the email and loads the remote images or clicks on a trackable link.

D-Coder13 tahun yang lalu

True, but probably not relevant to this artice. The "read" vs "loaded images/clicked link" ratio is probably the same before and after, so its exact meaning isn't important. But thanks for the clarification.

morsch13 tahun yang lalu

It does call into question the representativity of the findings, though.

For example, people who always show external images are overrepresented; the influence of the new design on open rates of other users is not predicted reliably.

Or, from another angle, I am more likely to load external images in emails that are important to me. The influence of the new design on the open rate of emails that are important to me (which get counted) is probably different from the influence of the new design on the open rate of emails that are NOT important to me (and that don't get counted even if I open them).

JohnTHaller13 tahun yang lalu

I figured I'd clarify the terminology as some folks in the comments here were saying things like they used to open up multiple mails and delete them as opposed to now where they just select and delete them within the Promotions tab without opening them. I wanted to ensure folks knew that this wouldn't affect the numbers the way they were expecting unless it was all from senders you'd specifically allowed remote images for.

glesica13 tahun yang lalu

"For marketers who are trying to establish a personal relationship with their customers..."

Isn't that kind of an oxymoron? How can the relationship be "personal" when one side of it (the marketer's side) is really just algorithmically-generated (and by that I do not necessarily mean "computer-generated") and the conversation is one-way?

jmduke13 tahun yang lalu

To give an example, pretend I'm a coffeeshop with a MailChimp list of ~200 subscribers.

1. I send out an email to my subscribers saying "Hey, what do you guys want to see improved with your Uptown Coffee experience?"

2. Customers respond with responses ranging from things like "cheaper coffee lol" to "I really like the atmosphere but I get frustrated because sometimes there isn't anywhere to sit!"

3. I can respond personally to these emails and get more information, at which point I get to make business decisions that result in happier customers and (hopefully) more revenue.

joeblau13 tahun yang lalu

To me an email survey is not personal. If you actually wrote an email to me, saying "Hey Joe, I see that you're doing x, y and z. What can I do to make your experience better?" which is written to me for me and not generic, that's establishing a relationship. I've gotten a hand written card from Fab.com founder Jason Goldberg which I've kept because that is personal.

hyperbovine13 tahun yang lalu

Don't know why you're getting downvoted, this is spot on. Machines talking to me like we went to high school together is one of my great peeves of the modern era.

memset13 tahun yang lalu

On that note, do realize that the vast majority of personalized hand-written cards you receive are written by taskrabbits who are trying to give that "personal" touch [1].

Mixpanel is one of the worst offenders of faux-personalized email. "I see you logged on today - were you able to accomplish what you wanted?" "I noticed that you were checking out the funnels feature. Can we set up a time to chat?" Go away.

[1] https://www.taskrabbit.com/sf-bay-area/search?search=handwri...

deegles13 tahun yang lalu

I honestly don't see why this is a bad thing. Would you prefer the automated emails?

If you were on the other side of the equation, how would you deal with trying to get real feedback about your product? To me, it's fair to thing a company that's goes through the expense and effort to have a real person (taskrabbit or not) contact me deserves just a bit more consideration.

memset13 tahun yang lalu

I'm saying that those emails are automated - triggered upon a series of click events as part of a "customer lifecycle management" plan. They are just written to sound personalized ("I noticed that...") but to me, are no less spammy than anything else.

Funny results of this are the fact that I'll be working on something over the weekend, trigger one of these automated messages, and email a response: "Oh yeah, I had a question, thanks for noticing!" Naturally I don't hear back until some time the following week.

It is always hard getting real feedback about your product. But a message like "Hey, you just joined, and I think you could do a better job with the way you structure your sales data" - because a human had looked at our business, looked at the way we used their product, and spent a moment trying to come up with a way to be helpful - would be way cooler to me than an automated tripwire.

For me, part of the reason the handwritten notes (shifting away from email for a moment) resonate with us is because we feel like an employee of the company - a grateful, hard-working employee - decided to spend their time painstakingly writing me a personalized note. That's why we write cards to our loved ones over the holidays.

But when you can pay someone to do that, then the CEO doesn't care - they're just factoring it into the customer acquisition cost. Which is totally okay. But it is equivalent to saying "I don't mind paying higher prices for Apple products because the unboxing experience is so great."

bdunn13 tahun yang lalu

I get what they're saying. I run a weekly newsletter, and often my "call to actions" are asking people to reply. Of the 6.5k people on my list, I've probably chatted in one way or another with at least 20% of them.

It's definitely relationship building at scale, and while I know it's "write once, send N-times", myself and most of the people on my list see a distinction between my newsletter and a grid of items on sale.

rrrhys13 tahun yang lalu

For what it's worth, your newsletter is one of a couple I've manually moved to my Primary tab.

kevinconroy13 tahun yang lalu

I consider this to be one of the highest compliments one can pay to a newsletter so I just signed up for it on this basis (also your landing page was pretty good).

toble13 tahun yang lalu

These algorithms really do stand out when I order stuff for friends and relatives who aren't computer literate, which means I get all their marketing emails. The accounts that order infrequently are showered with discount codes and special offers, whereas the regular purchasers get nothing.

admg13 tahun yang lalu

I guess at least they're referring to them as customers instead of consumers for a change.

joeblau13 tahun yang lalu

I had the exact same sentiment when I read that line. If marketers were typing each email instead of doing a generic name substation, then I could understand this, but they aren't.

Dirlewanger13 tahun yang lalu

Key word is trying...

bmelton13 tahun yang lalu

While I would generally agere with you completely, there are marketers with whom I have a very personal relationship.

What sticks out to me (because they sent me an email today discussing gmail's new layout and how to ensure I kept getting their emails) is my comic shop. They go through effort to know what I like, what to recommend to me, etc., etc., and are super friendly to boot (not affiliated plug, Third Eye Comics in Annapolis are AWESOME).

I genuinely want the emails they send me, even their most basic one-way emails provide me active value, and the relationship does transcend a more traditional marketing relationship, like the one I have with Amazon.

In short, it would not surprise me to know that there are other businesses that share more personal relationships with their customers than the merchant-customer model.

bumbledraven13 tahun yang lalu

I genuinely want the emails they send me, even their most basic one-way emails provide me active value, and the relationship does transcend a more traditional marketing relationship, like the one I have with Amazon.

If you drag those messages from Promotions to Primary, Gmail will ask you if you want to do the same thing for all messages from that sender.

bmelton13 tahun yang lalu

Yes. That's exactly what they emailed me to suggest, but I haven't gotten the new layout yet for it to matter.

gufyvgv13 tahun yang lalu

furilo13 tahun yang lalu

Hacker News audience, developers or/and internet workers population in general are very sensitive to commercial newsletters. There are lots of comments that read "commercial newsletters = spam".

But reality is that for many online businesses email is the primary sales channel or a very important one. Lots of commercial newsletters are sent, but they main reason for this is because they work. Plain and simple. Lots of "normal" people (not too tech savy that will never hear about Hacker News in their whole lives) use commercial email as on their primary ways of ecommerce browsing. Just as setting up a beatiful and atractive front shop one hundred years ago made a difference in your bottom line, email is an element of crucial importance. Furthermore, lots of ecommerce companies have invested tons of money in developing this channel. Hey, maybe your salary is paid by one of this ecommerce giants! So three things:

1) Commercial email works. Many people don't bother receiving lots of commercial email. In fact, they love it. Google knows this, so:

2) one of the main reasons for Google making this change is to create an effective channel to deliver their own ad impressions in the format that people loves and use. But,

3) in doing so they may be invading a space in which lots of companies have invested a lot (and those same companies surely have already invested in other Google products).

Its a similar pattern with SERPs: you invested in SEO but now the first page is only made up of Google products or paid positions.

ProblemFactory13 tahun yang lalu

Commercial newsletters are not a problem - and having tabs for Promotions and Updates made them more friendly.

This way, users can review and maybe-read the newsletters once a week, instead of having them mixed with actually urgent emails from their family and "server is down" alerts.

danielrhodes13 tahun yang lalu

"The word on the street is that business owners and marketers are worried about this new layout, and I get that. You want your email above the fold, on the cover, with a huge headline. You want to stand out to your customer, and instead you’re on the Promotions page with all the other ads."

This blog post is like an ad for GMail. Sounds like the tabs feature works very effectively.

jmduke13 tahun yang lalu

I really liked the idea of the new inbox at first but right now its overzealousness with the Promotions tab is tempting me to merge everything back into Primary. Daily VC news emails are not promotions; digests of roguelike updates are not promotions; emails from my grandmother to try a brownie recipe aren't promotions (well, I guess they sorta are.)

(Yes, you can train it to send emails from [email protected] to primary by default, but at that point what advantage is the split inbox offering me?)

k-mcgrady13 tahun yang lalu

Just drag your daily VC emails into the primary tab and they should got here from now on. Not really any training involved, it only takes a few seconds.

telcodud13 tahun yang lalu

You can also train it by dragging the email from one tab to another. Sometimes I end up dragging emails from my bank or phone carrier from Promotions to Updates tab.

DanBC13 tahun yang lalu

I quite like it, but I'm having to do some work to train it to send some ebay junk into promotion and send some useful ebay stuff from promotion into primary.

I do wonder if Google is using my training data to help other people?

And if they are, should that be scary? Because a lot of people are idiots and I'm not sure I want them to have much influence on my inbox. (See, for example, Google dropping the + operator in search because so few people used it, and even less people used it correctly.)

notatoad13 tahun yang lalu

do you have the updates tab turned on? my inbox is pretty good about filing digests and updates under the 'updates' tab and actual marketing under the promotions tab.

it works really great for my usage, where the primary tab is the only one that makes my phone beep. i want to read brownie recipes from grandma and digests of bad updates, but not immediately. Gmail does a great job of sorting out things you need to be notified of into the primary tab, and putting other things in the other tabs.

srathi13 tahun yang lalu

My primary gripe with the new tabs is that the 'unread message count' is not displayed on each tab and I've to go to each of them every time to see if something new has popped up.

adrr13 tahun yang lalu

Overzealous is an understatement. Looks like its categorizing everything from ESPs as promotions. Things like my Newrelic alerts to our servers alerts are being improperly put into promotions. Its an easy fix but there's always possibility i'll miss an important email that gets sent rarely.

sp33213 tahun yang lalu

They should be glad for the Promotions tab. Now that promotional emails aren't gumming up my primary inbox, I'm much less likely to unsubscribe from them. I don't mind having coupons for stores I rarely visit, or newsletters for projects I'm vaguely interested in, since I don't have to deal with them every time I open my mail.

eli13 tahun yang lalu

I see where you're coming from, but I sure would have preferred if GMail asked me if this was something I wanted rather than just forcing it on me.

sp33213 tahun yang lalu

"Forcing" is a bit much. When it is rolled out to a user, there is a popup asking which tabs the user wants to enable. It's technically opt-out, but it's literally one click (no digging through menus) to say "I don't want this."

eli13 tahun yang lalu

Now I wish I took a screenshot, but I do not recall any "I don't want this" button when it hit my inbox.

derefr13 tahun yang lalu

"Go ahead" was a button, and "I don't want this" was a plain link beside it.

sp33213 tahun yang lalu

I think you can get the same box by clicking the + next to your tabs now, right?

antirez13 tahun yang lalu

Gmail new tabs is an incredibly cool feature for people receiving tons of mails. The Gmail team realized that there is spam that's not spam, and is the promotions email, it is awesome to see them away from my inbox...

clicks13 tahun yang lalu

> The Gmail team realized that there is spam that's not spam

That is a very good way to put it, and is just how I feel. It's too bad they were criticized that the tab move was just all about more effective advertising (it may be a little bit true, but doesn't negate the fact that this is a really good innovation on the email management front).

psbp13 tahun yang lalu

I hope the backlash isn't enough to force them to change it. I think people misrepresented the (mostly positive) changes to get some google hate blog views.

Raphael13 tahun yang lalu

Good feature with redundant interface. Labels and such already appear down the left side. No need to waste more vertical space.

buro913 tahun yang lalu

Will the issue of arriving in the Promotions and Updates tab affect transactional emails sent through MailChimp (and comparable competitors)?

For example, if I'm sending a "Here's your password reset email" via MailChimp, will I now have to worry about it not just potentially going into spam, but also under some tab that the user may not look.

I'm only really concerned about the transactional email, whilst we send list mail too I think it's reasonable that is classified however the user and the user client deems fit (if they wish to receive that at all). But when it comes to an email that the user has explicitly requested and expects immediately, not having it go straight to their visible and main inbox is an issue.

dmgrow13 tahun yang lalu

Thus far we have seen our transactional emails also going to Promotions, as well as our standard marketing emails.

This could be both good and bad. Bad because as you mention, the user won't see it immediately even if they requested it. Good because if the user actually uses and likes your service, they may start to take those transactional emails to their Priority inbox which could train it to also respect the marketing type e-mails as Priority as well. Again, this would only happen if the user actually likes your service.

dugmartin13 tahun yang lalu

I'm using Mandrill to send out my transactional email. I'm hoping this change doesn't force me to get back into the mail server business - that is something I gladly pay to outsource.

buro913 tahun yang lalu

Exactly my concern.

Transactional email deliverability is more important than marketing emails to me. If needs must, I'll host my own again... but I really like not managing email servers and fighting blacklists.

buro913 tahun yang lalu

Hmm.

I hope Gmail figure this one out... the transactional emails should always hit the inbox. I think most users would be fine if the marketing emails hit the promotions tab.

I'm not sure it should be all or nothing... but I know that every user would agree that the transactional emails that they explicitly want should hit their inbox.

100k13 tahun yang lalu

This change is going to be brutal for anyone with a newsletter.

No implication that this is the reason for the change, but it probably means more spending on traditional web advertising.

_delirium13 tahun yang lalu

So far I've found it only affecting sales-type newsletters, which is interesting. Adorama's newsletter (which I could've sworn I opted out of) goes to Promotions, but the ACM newsletter still goes to Inbox.

malandrew13 tahun yang lalu

    "I’ve heard a lot of people asking how they can get out of 
    the Promotions tab and into the Primary tab."

You should have told them that if they are in the promotions tab then that is probably where they should be. Sending promotional bulk emails and wanting to be in the primary tab is antithesis to what customers want. Being a promotional email in the primary tab I would imagine would be more likely to be marked as spam.

dangrossman13 tahun yang lalu

I'm seeing transactional mail like signup confirmations and password resets in the promotions tab. There are lots of lists I subscribe to that are "bulk" but not promotional as well. MailChimp has over 3 million users, and zero of them are affiliate marketers. Not all of their users' mail belongs in a promotions tab.

joshuacc13 tahun yang lalu

Indeed. To give one example, I run a weekly newsletter with JavaScript tips. That probably shouldn't be categorized as Promotions. Perhaps Social or Forums instead?

Lewisham13 tahun yang lalu

I don't see any way of getting around this that isn't just rife for abuse. I guess/hope that Gmail learns from user behavior, so if enough of them start moving the mail to the Forums list (which is what I think it should be, Social Updates implies some personal update from Facebook/Twitter/G+, not newsletters), it would automatically filter there instead.

EDIT: Also, many users might feel like Promos is the right tab. For example, Weight Watchers emails me recipes, which is a bit like a developer getting Javascript tips. This also goes in Promos, and that seems like the right place for it, even though it's useful/actionable information.

untog13 tahun yang lalu

Am I the only person that had a "Promotions" filter added to their Gmail ages ago? I've also not got the new tabs, either. I'm wondering if I am in some lost zone.

vwinsyee13 tahun yang lalu

I've been using the label:^smartlabel_group, label:^smartlabel_notification, and label:^smartlabel_promo filters for probably over a couple years now. I have all notifications and promos "skip inbox" and I just go check those labels a couple times a day or when I have a password reset email (which almost always goes to notification). These filters absolutely keep my inbox (which is itself split into 'regular' and 'priority') sane. Having this set up, I don't really see a reason for myself to get the tabbed interface.

Nagyman13 tahun yang lalu

Settings -> Configure Inbox -> Save

That turned it on for me.

minimax13 tahun yang lalu

Just tried that and now I've got tabs in GMail. Thanks for the tip.

limejuice13 tahun yang lalu

I also don't have Promotions tab either. I just tried editing Settings and Saving, and still no Promotions tab.

I use lots of filters and labels to categorize my mail already. I have label 'Shopping' and have a bunch of filters set to skip inbox, so I only see it if I click the 'Shopping' label. This works well for sales emails I am subscribed too, but doesn't help for new sales emails, although most of that ends up in the Spam folder.

limejuice13 tahun yang lalu

Settings -> Configure Inbox -> Save worked for me. Now I have Promotions tab.

gammarator13 tahun yang lalu

I believe it was a Gmail Labs feature first, you may have turned it on there.

lnanek213 tahun yang lalu

Google is known for doing partial and test roll outs. E.g. some 5% of users may get a change so they can do metrics on it, then later on they may keep the change and roll it out more or get rid of it.

[deleted]13 tahun yang lalu

mortov13 tahun yang lalu

I don't think this indicates a Google problem.

They're lucky Google even deliver them to any tab - based on their own figures it's almost a 90% chance of their email being binned by end users (OK, not opened but that's pretty much the same thing). On systems I administer that's way above the threshold I'd consider for blacklist/auto-reject.

Without trying to disparage their business, Mailchimp and associated 'services' are rarely providing 'quality' email in my experience and I don't get customers calling me up asking me to make sure such emails come through. Quite the opposite.

It's hard in the mass email business because most people (e.g. almost 90% it seems) think the emails are crap and don't want them or open them. If that's upsetting then don't complain. You need to look for a different business where you'll feel more loved and appreciated. Mass email is not it and never will be.

JohnTHaller13 tahun yang lalu

It's worth noting that the open rates only apply when an image is loaded from the remote server or the recipient clicks a trackable link (if the emailing system is setup properly). When a recipient opens and reads an email without showing the images or clicking a link, it doesn't count as an open as the sender has no way to track that.

[deleted]13 tahun yang lalu

na8513 tahun yang lalu

I'm glad that Open Rates are going down.

I don't want your sales-funnel emails full of doublespeak and marketing buzzwords.

You think your email is full of helpful info about your product but it's not. It's just spam.

petercooper13 tahun yang lalu

Except that's not the only use for mass e-mail.

I have over 120,000 developers who subscribe to my e-mail newsletters and I suspect most subscribers would not consider them "Promotions." Hopefully those who care to read every week will drag them back into the main inbox but I imagine some will fall by the wayside. (Not that I'm panicking, I'm not noticing much of a/any drop in open rates at all.)

cheshire13713 tahun yang lalu

Or maybe their email is full of helpful info about their product... But I don't give a damn about their product.

josephers13 tahun yang lalu

I used to "open" marketing emails for fractions of a second while browsing my inbox with keyboard shortcuts. I go to the next email, and if it's a marketing email, I move to the next email.

But with the Promotions tab, I check the titles, and if they're not interesting, I mark them together as read without opening it.

So, my reading behaviour hasn't changed even though tracking my open rate with tracking pixels will now show different results. If it's an interesting email, I'll read it. If not, I won't.

JohnTHaller13 tahun yang lalu

If you didn't have 'show remote images' on, there's no difference as it wouldn't count as an open. And it's off by default for all senders in gmail and every other worthwhile webmail provider.

blackysky13 tahun yang lalu

Internet marketers are panicking right now. I've received a dozen of e-mails to teach me how to bring their "not promotions" e-mails back to my primary inbox...Hate it or love it but I think Microsoft Yahoo Apple are going to follow that trend too... Of course the system is not perfect yet but it is something regular people are going to love...at least my mom love it. I have 5 tabs up and running.I have more control over my inbox now. I can understand why internet marketers are mad because it is a new ball game to be next to Facebook updates versus in a box alone with other promotion e-mails... In the long term your brand your goodwill are your only and best weapons...Open Rates are just one metric because you can have one open and 5 conversions versus 5 opens and 0 conversions... the main difference here could be that one open leads to 10 shares on Facebook....This new UX is a non issue...it is really time to disrupt the e-mail system

sologoub13 tahun yang lalu

"I’ve messed around with a ton of different content and header configurations, and anything that looks like it came from an ESP (has a list-unsubscribe header, unsubscribe links in the content, etc…) goes to either the Promotions tab or the Updates tab."

This is actually a really important UX/CX thing to keep in mind when creating newsletters or other emailed publications with actual content as the product. My Pycoder's Weekly ended up in Promotions tab. Since I don't look at it every day, my initial thought was I didn't receive it.

In order to have it show up in Primary, I had to create a rule on the sender. We'll see if this actually works.

Granted, Pycoder's Weekly is ad-supported, but that's what I opted in for.

For others creating similar subscriptions, it's probably worthwhile to mention this gmail behavior in an FAQ or some other instructions.

ripter13 tahun yang lalu

You can also just drag the message over to primary and gmail will learn that it's a primary message.

azeemk13 tahun yang lalu

It's definitely affecting how I open my emails. Promotions just get straight deleted.

kzahel13 tahun yang lalu

The tabs feature is a godsend. It's definitely affecting my email behavior and making me a happier person. Instead of deleting individual marketing emails or sometimes trying to unsubscribe, I can now just ignore them completely!

thrownaway242413 tahun yang lalu

But how much confidence do you have in the classification? I find myself polling all the tabs so I don't miss anything important. An example: my Amazon seller notifications go the the Promotions tab.

robertfw13 tahun yang lalu

I'm finding it faster to do the tab polling than it would to extract out the items I want to bin from one unified inbox. Definitely making my morning email cull faster.

rip74713 tahun yang lalu

just drag the email into the primary tab and it will always put it there

thrownaway242413 tahun yang lalu

Sure, and then I have to keep polling the Promotions tab to find out if there's any new stuff being classified in there.

jack-r-abbit13 tahun yang lalu

The first thing I did when I got the new gmail tabs was uncheck them. I don't want my mail tabbed. But thanks for asking. :)

alberth13 tahun yang lalu

Something about their analysis just doesn't sound right.

"I dug deep into our database and pulled every delivery to Gmail for the past year and half. That amounts to 12.5 billion emails".

Then he says

"As you might suspect, Gmail opens do follow these hourly, weekly, and seasonal trends, but on the whole they remain fairly steady. With that settled, I trimmed my data to a lean 6 weeks around the introduction of tabs. That’s about 1.5 billion emails, which is plenty of records for a good analysis."

So, 1.5 years = 12.5B Gmail emails

But last 6 weeks = 1.5B Gmail emails

That doesn't sound right.

Unless MailChimp is on some type of unbelievable (true) exponential growth rate in the past few months.

Edit: typo

jedi_stannis13 tahun yang lalu

1.5 years is 78 weeks. 12.5B emails / 78 weeks ~ 160 million emails a week.

6 weeks * 160 million ~ 960 million emails.

So the last 6 weeks is 156% of the average. That seems like good growth, not unbelievable growth.

petercooper13 tahun yang lalu

12500000000 / 547.5 (1.5 years) == roughly 23m e-mails per day over the 1.5 year sample.

1500000000 / (6 * 7) (6 weeks) == roughly 35m e-mails per day over the past six weeks.

tracker113 tahun yang lalu

As for the marketers... and you can quote me on this... "Fuck 'em" .. The issue is that you aren't the only ones vying for our attention... I get so much crap to wade through I can't keep up. What really gets me is the frequency, I see so many marketing emails from places I actually do business with, that legitimate and important emails slip through the cracks.

I have an acquaintance who had an online account compromised, his shipping address changed, and stuff ordered... He didn't notice the change/receipt emails because of all the garbage emails he receives from said vendor.

It's a serious problem. I feel the same way about technical recruiters for the most part now too... I get maybe 3-5 emails a day, and 3/4 are either out of state, and/or well below what I make now... I'm not interested in either generally speaking. That doesn't even count all the "connect with me on linked in" requests from people I don't know, and the emails that go with them.

Hell, even twitter is in on it all now.

coob13 tahun yang lalu

Google doesn't get paid for emailed ads. They'd rather you were paying them for ads that masquerade as genuine emails.

Tomdarkness13 tahun yang lalu

But they both are displayed in the promotions tab so how does paying for an ad in the promotions tab that looks like a email solve the problem of a marketing email being displayed in the promotions tab?

jonheller13 tahun yang lalu

This makes me very happy to not be in the email marketing business anymore.

martin-adams13 tahun yang lalu

I'm really not surprised it's bringing down open rates. I find I'm ignoring far more emails in my inbox as they are out of view and in the promotions tab.

Ultimately, if I don't open the email, the content isn't that useful. Before I would quickly open and delete when done, just to keep my inbox clean.

Does it mean I pay less attention to the marketing messages? No.

diminoten13 tahun yang lalu

Off topic, but does anyone else here think the UI for the new tabs is god-awful? I wish they could become custom labels, and be treated as such.

I feel like the fact that they're now explicitly tabs is a compromise that allows a marketer to still get the user's attention without filling up the "inbox" with what might be considered spam.

pjmlp13 tahun yang lalu

Yes, the minute I saw it I disabled everything back to the old UI.

At home I use an IMAP client anyway.

ams611013 tahun yang lalu

The word on the street is that business owners and marketers are worried about this new layout, and I get that. You want your email above the fold, on the cover, with a huge headline. You want to stand out to your customer, and instead you’re on the Promotions page with all the other ads.

News flash: you don't own my inbox.

ersii13 tahun yang lalu

Huh, before reading this article - I didn't know you could turn the tab interface off. I thought I'd try it, just so I would be able to nitpick and say "Hey! You think it's a choice for them, but it actually ain't!".

If you'd like to disable the tab interface in GMail, here's how you do it: Log on, click the gears in the top right corner - below your user profile icon. Select "Configure inbox" and de-select "Social" and "Promotions".

I first thought it was impossible to do this when I found this configuration page, because the first option is "greyed out" and unclickable.

This seems like the first time you're allowed to not eat the Gone Google Again-bullet - which is good for me as a user! Sometimes I really don't want to get your new feature or design.

ig113 tahun yang lalu

One big problem is that it's hitting event emails which tend to use similar email services for distribution. If an event has to be cancelled last minute or if there is some major changes and the announcement email gets missed it could easily cost someone a significant amount of money.

astral30313 tahun yang lalu

This is yet another reason why you need to look past e-mail for personalized communication with your customers. Personalized messaging inside your web site or app is much more effective for certain use cases.

Are you e-mailing your users to tell them about a new feature? Why not show them an in-app message instead, when they are logged on and engaged? Are you e-mailing a custom offer to a certain segment of your user base? Show them the offer when they're on your site.

Obviously, if you are contacting users that are not visiting your site at all, then e-mail is still king.

Personally, I am glad to see Gmail implement this kind of separation so well.

Full disclosure/plug: I work for Evergage (http://evergage.com) and we provide this behavioral-driven in-app messaging.

snowwrestler13 tahun yang lalu

The use case and purpose of email marketing is totally different from in-app messaging. Email drives return visits; in-app messaging drives conversions.

Edit to add analogy: it's like saying JCrew does not need to send catalogs because they have great signage in their stores.

astral30313 tahun yang lalu

Yes, they are fairly different, but there is a fair amount of crossover. Specifically, much of the crossover is there because the state of the art in marketing automation in e-mail is much higher than outside of it. It's much easier for a marketing person to work with an e-mail marketing automation system. Implementing targeted in-app messaging campaigns, on the other hand, typically requires development team cycles (not with us though).

But I'll run with your analogy. JCrew can send me a targeted 20% off coupon, for example because I am a store cardholder or it's my birthday month. However, the purpose of that coupon is not solely to drive return visits. I might frequently stop by a JCrew while in a mall to look at merchandise, but I might be much more likely to convert if I knew I had a coupon.

However, when I am actually at JCrew in a mall, JCrew won't have signage with my coupon and won't recognize it's my birthday. It sure would be nice though.

s3r3nity13 tahun yang lalu

As a data scientist, the lack of error bars hurts me deep inside (i.e. are these statistically significant drops?)

Nevertheless very insightful, and I appreciate the use of data as opposed to many of the anecdotal reviews of Gmail's new inbox swirling around HN these days.

AlexanderHektor13 tahun yang lalu

I believe that this can be very useful for the mainstream user.

It is however much much more useful for Google from a business perspective.

Lower openrates mean less eyeballs and revenue, which will in turn translate into more adwords and display placements. Obviously not directly, and probably not in most cases, but it should, even if it's only a few percent or less, translate into more revenue for Google. How much is anybody's guess.

If I were an E-Mail marketer or a big brand though, I'd be furious and try any other channels but Google's. In my eyes, it smells like Google using its market power to bully their own customers. They pulled a classic Facebook with this one ;)

impendia13 tahun yang lalu

> For marketers who are trying to establish a personal relationship with their customers, this change can be frustrating.

This, even without any further context, describes what 99% of Gmail users would consider an overwhelming positive.

orangethirty13 tahun yang lalu

There is one point to understand. This greatly benefits Google as it allows to reduce the response rate of competing marketing products, and increase the response of their own. Not that they should care about being fair. Gmail is theirs. They can do as they please. People should understand that they will simply optimize for their benefit, not for the benefit of some other platform (in this case Mailchimp.

Want to increase your rates? Send your email to the user's facebook account. Those get read almost instantly.

thehme13 tahun yang lalu

I think a lot of people were already using filters before these tabs came along; I know I was. All that junk and even stuff I did care to look at every once in a while is and will continue to skip my inbox and go into my filtered folders. In fact, the only good thing about the "new" tabs is that I don't have to click on the filter folders. Anyways, marketers should be selling things worth selling and not trying to find a workaround to get into our inbox.

joshaidan13 tahun yang lalu

My theory is that the reason for Google implementing the Promotion tab is so that they can put ads into the INBOXs of people who use desktop and mobile clients. Doing it this way won't be too intrusive to people who use the web client, which already has a place for ads to be viewed.

iurisilvio13 tahun yang lalu

If you don't like it, go to Settings > Inbox > change the "Inbox type". I'm already back to the one tab model. I had some important emails in promotions tab, so I can't just ignore that tab.

Lewisham13 tahun yang lalu

Were they coming from different senders? Would moving the email and/or setting up a filter not fixed this? I'm wondering what you think of as being "important" that would have ended up there. The classification for me has been very good.

PanMan13 tahun yang lalu

Interesting, but is it really true 'normal' open rates are also only 13%? Or is this how it's measured, e.g. only including people who click 'show images', and thus load the tracking pixels?

[deleted]13 tahun yang lalu

msumpter13 tahun yang lalu

Typically the open rate is the combination of unique users who download images (along with the tracking pixel embedded) and unique users who click on tracked links from within the email.

[deleted]13 tahun yang lalu

MortenK13 tahun yang lalu

Open rate does not include the people who view the email without images, unless those people click a link in the email.

A standard open rate (across email clients) is between 15-30%. However it's possible to consistently hit a 50-60% open rate, if you know what you are doing, basically meaning using correct techniques and content / offers that are really relevant to your recipients. BoringCo sending emails titled "March newsletter" will get 5-10% typically.

jjindev13 tahun yang lalu

In general, I think it would have been smart to offer tabs to high volume users. When I only have 10 new things, tabs are ... stupid.

(Amusingly it put an old girlfriend's "my new page is at" in promotions.)

hatu13 tahun yang lalu

I'm not really a high volume user (0 unread most of the time) but I have tons of tabs and filters. I really only want to be notified of a new email when it's from someone I personally know.

jjindev13 tahun yang lalu

I'm not saying there should be no tab/filter options (I used filter/folder options before tabs arrived). I'm just suggesting sticking the 3 defaults on everyone was a bad idea. Just adding the "+" and directing to a how-to would have been IMO appropriate.

qqg313 tahun yang lalu

I'm confused, tabs has been rolled out slowly across Gmail users. I know people with and without it still. SO how do they define a point of 'release'?

Sektor13 tahun yang lalu

What i find disturbing is the whole article revolves around trying to get spam back into the primary tab, exactly where no one wants it other than the sender

mahgnous13 tahun yang lalu

Oh waaaaah, poor spammers are losing money.

stephengillie13 tahun yang lalu

What new inbox? I have seen no change for months, and I view my gmail inbox on the web daily.

WestCoastJustin13 tahun yang lalu

There is a new inbox header [1] in Gmail, which adds tabs for your normal inbox, social, promotions, etc.

[1] http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en-US/features.html

stephengillie13 tahun yang lalu

Weird that I haven't seen this, but I've been using exactly this label filtering system for years -- I literally have had a "Social" label since 2008.

(I added "Financial" and "Sales" labels later)

Edit: apparently it was turned on but not displaying any tabs. In the settings gear I found "Configure Inbox" where I disabled these.

dools13 tahun yang lalu

It would be way more valid to analyse click through rates than open rates.

stevoski13 tahun yang lalu

tl;dr Mass email "opens" have dropped from 13% to 12.25% (more or less, according to the chart), where "open" is according to MailChimp's definition/mechanism.

quantumpotato_13 tahun yang lalu

You can remove the promotions tab..

aet13 tahun yang lalu

This is off-topic, but if people don't like ads, why don't they just use Gmail with POP3 or IMAP?

[deleted]13 tahun yang lalu

bifrost13 tahun yang lalu

Because then there's basically no reason to use GMail, it has no value add without the UI.

snogglethorpe13 tahun yang lalu

Even without the UI, gmail is free email storage of fairly large capacity, which is also extremely reliable, accessible, fast, professionally-backed-up, and unlikely to go out of business any time soon...

johnchristopher13 tahun yang lalu

I'd venture to guess that the majority of gmail users don't know they can access their gmail e-mail with a desktop client.

And I'd venture to guess that those who know don't know how to set up a mail client.

MisterBastahrd13 tahun yang lalu

You seriously don't understand the difference between an ad popping up somewhere on the page and an ad you have to delete when it enters your inbox?

aet13 tahun yang lalu

Do the ads actually get shipped to you if you use a desktop client?

hnriot13 tahun yang lalu

haha, i don't think you understand this at all.

aet13 tahun yang lalu

Oops, I should have read the article.

herbig13 tahun yang lalu

Keep in mind, correlation != causation.

anotherbadlogin13 tahun yang lalu

gufyvgv13 tahun yang lalu