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How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates

287 points by duck 13y ago

PanMan 13y ago
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 13y ago
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- msumpter 13y ago
  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 13y ago
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- MortenK 13y ago
  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.
azeemk 13y ago
It's definitely affecting how I open my emails. Promotions just get straight deleted.
- kzahel 13y ago
  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!
  - thrownaway2424 13y ago
    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.
    - rip747 13y ago
      just drag the email into the primary tab and it will always put it there
      - thrownaway2424 13y ago
        Sure, and then I have to keep polling the Promotions tab to find out if there's any new stuff being classified in there.
    - robertfw 13y ago
      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.
100k 13y ago
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.
- _delirium 13y ago
  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.
aet 13y ago
This is off-topic, but if people don't like ads, why don't they just use Gmail with POP3 or IMAP?
- deleted 13y ago
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- bifrost 13y ago
  Because then there's basically no reason to use GMail, it has no value add without the UI.
  - snogglethorpe 13y ago
    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...
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  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.
- MisterBastahrd 13y ago
  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?
  - aet 13y ago
    Do the ads actually get shipped to you if you use a desktop client?
- hnriot 13y ago
  haha, i don't think you understand this at all.
josephers 13y ago
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.
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  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.
jonheller 13y ago
This makes me very happy to not be in the email marketing business anymore.
untog 13y ago
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.
- lnanek2 13y ago
  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.
- Nagyman 13y ago
  Settings -> Configure Inbox -> Save That turned it on for me.
  - minimax 13y ago
    Just tried that and now I've got tabs in GMail. Thanks for the tip.
- deleted 13y ago
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- vwinsyee 13y ago
  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.
- limejuice 13y ago
  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.
stephengillie 13y ago
What new inbox? I have seen no change for months, and I view my gmail inbox on the web daily.
- WestCoastJustin 13y ago
  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 http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en-US/features.html
  - stephengillie 13y ago
    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.
quantumpotato_ 13y ago
You can remove the promotions tab..
Ricapar 13y ago
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.
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  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.
  - matthewmacleod 13y ago
    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.
    - thrownaway2424 13y ago
      "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.
jmduke 13y ago
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 X@Y.Z to primary by default, but at that point what advantage is the split inbox offering me?)
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  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.
- telcodud 13y ago
  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.
- DanBC 13y ago
  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.)
- notatoad 13y ago
  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.
mortov 13y ago
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.
- deleted 13y ago
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- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  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.
iurisilvio 13y ago
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.
- Lewisham 13y ago
  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.
buro9 13y ago
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.
- dmgrow 13y ago
  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.
  - buro9 13y ago
    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.
  - dugmartin 13y ago
    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.
    - buro9 13y ago
thehme 13y ago
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.
herbig 13y ago
Keep in mind, correlation != causation.
joshaidan 13y ago
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.
martin-adams 13y ago
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.
danielrhodes 13y ago
"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.
JohnTHaller 13y ago
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-Coder 13y ago
  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.
  - JohnTHaller 13y ago
    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.
  - morsch 13y ago
    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).
na85 13y ago
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.
- petercooper 13y ago
  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.)
- cheshire137 13y ago
  Or maybe their email is full of helpful info about their product... But I don't give a damn about their product.
glesica 13y ago
"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?
- Dirlewanger 13y ago
  Key word is trying...
- jmduke 13y ago
  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.
  - joeblau 13y ago
    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.
    - hyperbovine 13y ago
      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.
    - memset 13y ago
ig1 13y ago
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.
malandrew 13y ago
"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.
- dangrossman 13y ago
  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.
  - joshuacc 13y ago
    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?
    - Lewisham 13y ago
      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.
sp332 13y ago
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.
- eli 13y ago
  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.
  - sp332 13y ago
    "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."
    - eli 13y ago
      Now I wish I took a screenshot, but I do not recall any "I don't want this" button when it hit my inbox.
      - sp332 13y ago
        I think you can get the same box by clicking the + next to your tabs now, right?
      - derefr 13y ago
        "Go ahead" was a button, and "I don't want this" was a plain link beside it.
coob 13y ago
Google doesn't get paid for emailed ads. They'd rather you were paying them for ads that masquerade as genuine emails.
- Tomdarkness 13y ago
  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?
impendia 13y ago
> 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.
jjindev 13y ago
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.)
- hatu 13y ago
  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.
  - jjindev 13y ago
    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.
furilo 13y ago
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.
- ProblemFactory 13y ago
  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.
s3r3nity 13y ago
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.
diminoten 13y ago
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.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Yes, the minute I saw it I disabled everything back to the old UI. At home I use an IMAP client anyway.
sologoub 13y ago
"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.
- ripter 13y ago
  You can also just drag the message over to primary and gmail will learn that it's a primary message.
AlexanderHektor 13y ago
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 ;)
astral303 13y ago
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 http://evergage.com) and we provide this behavioral-driven in-app messaging.
- snowwrestler 13y ago
  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.
  - astral303 13y ago
    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.
jack-r-abbit 13y ago
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. :)
blackysky 13y ago
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
alberth 13y ago
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_stannis 13y ago
  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.
- petercooper 13y ago
  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.
qqg3 13y ago
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'?
antirez 13y ago
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...
- clicks 13y ago
  > 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).
  - psbp 13y ago
    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.
- Raphael 13y ago
  Good feature with redundant interface. Labels and such already appear down the left side. No need to waste more vertical space.
ams6110 13y ago
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.
anotherbadlogin 13y ago
Their defective mobile site is sure reducing message-deletion rates (since there's no Delete button).
mahgnous 13y ago
Oh waaaaah, poor spammers are losing money.
dools 13y ago
It would be way more valid to analyse click through rates than open rates.
orangethirty 13y ago
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.
Sektor 13y ago
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
ersii 13y ago
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.
tracker1 13y ago
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.
stevoski 13y ago
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.
gufyvgv 13y ago
中山市

287 points by duck 13y ago

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?

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msumpter 13y ago
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 13y ago
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MortenK 13y ago
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.

azeemk 13y ago

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

kzahel 13y ago
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!
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  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.
  - rip747 13y ago
    just drag the email into the primary tab and it will always put it there
    - thrownaway2424 13y ago
      Sure, and then I have to keep polling the Promotions tab to find out if there's any new stuff being classified in there.
  - robertfw 13y ago
    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.

100k 13y ago

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.

_delirium 13y ago
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.

aet 13y ago

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

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bifrost 13y ago
Because then there's basically no reason to use GMail, it has no value add without the UI.
- snogglethorpe 13y ago
  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...
johnchristopher 13y ago
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.
MisterBastahrd 13y ago
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?
- aet 13y ago
  Do the ads actually get shipped to you if you use a desktop client?
hnriot 13y ago
haha, i don't think you understand this at all.

josephers 13y ago

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.

JohnTHaller 13y ago
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.

jonheller 13y ago

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

untog 13y ago

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.

lnanek2 13y ago
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.
Nagyman 13y ago
Settings -> Configure Inbox -> Save That turned it on for me.
- minimax 13y ago
  Just tried that and now I've got tabs in GMail. Thanks for the tip.
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vwinsyee 13y ago
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.
limejuice 13y ago
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.

stephengillie 13y ago

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

WestCoastJustin 13y ago
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 http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en-US/features.html
- stephengillie 13y ago
  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.

quantumpotato_ 13y ago

You can remove the promotions tab..

Ricapar 13y ago

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.

thrownaway2424 13y ago
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.
- matthewmacleod 13y ago
  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.
  - thrownaway2424 13y ago
    "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.

jmduke 13y ago

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 X@Y.Z to primary by default, but at that point what advantage is the split inbox offering me?)

k-mcgrady 13y ago
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.
telcodud 13y ago
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.
DanBC 13y ago
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.)
notatoad 13y ago
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.

mortov 13y ago

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.

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JohnTHaller 13y ago
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.

iurisilvio 13y ago

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.

Lewisham 13y ago
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.

buro9 13y ago

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.

dmgrow 13y ago
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.
- buro9 13y ago
  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.
- dugmartin 13y ago
  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.
  - buro9 13y ago

thehme 13y ago

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.

herbig 13y ago

Keep in mind, correlation != causation.

joshaidan 13y ago

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.

martin-adams 13y ago

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.

danielrhodes 13y ago

"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.

JohnTHaller 13y ago

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-Coder 13y ago
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.
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  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.
- morsch 13y ago
  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).

na85 13y ago

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.

petercooper 13y ago
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.)
cheshire137 13y ago
Or maybe their email is full of helpful info about their product... But I don't give a damn about their product.

glesica 13y ago

"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?

Dirlewanger 13y ago
Key word is trying...
jmduke 13y ago
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.
- joeblau 13y ago
  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.
  - hyperbovine 13y ago
    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.
  - memset 13y ago

ig1 13y ago

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.

malandrew 13y ago

"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.

dangrossman 13y ago
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.
- joshuacc 13y ago
  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?
  - Lewisham 13y ago
    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.

sp332 13y ago

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.

eli 13y ago
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.
- sp332 13y ago
  "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."
  - eli 13y ago
    Now I wish I took a screenshot, but I do not recall any "I don't want this" button when it hit my inbox.
    - sp332 13y ago
      I think you can get the same box by clicking the + next to your tabs now, right?
    - derefr 13y ago
      "Go ahead" was a button, and "I don't want this" was a plain link beside it.

coob 13y ago

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

Tomdarkness 13y ago
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?

impendia 13y ago

> 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.

jjindev 13y ago

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.)

hatu 13y ago
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.
- jjindev 13y ago
  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.

furilo 13y ago

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.

ProblemFactory 13y ago
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.

s3r3nity 13y ago

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.

diminoten 13y ago

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.

pjmlp 13y ago
Yes, the minute I saw it I disabled everything back to the old UI. At home I use an IMAP client anyway.

sologoub 13y ago

"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.

ripter 13y ago
You can also just drag the message over to primary and gmail will learn that it's a primary message.

AlexanderHektor 13y ago

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 ;)

astral303 13y ago

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 http://evergage.com) and we provide this behavioral-driven in-app messaging.

snowwrestler 13y ago
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.
- astral303 13y ago
  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.

jack-r-abbit 13y ago

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. :)

blackysky 13y ago

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

alberth 13y ago

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_stannis 13y ago
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.
petercooper 13y ago
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.

qqg3 13y ago

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'?

antirez 13y ago

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...

clicks 13y ago
> 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).
- psbp 13y ago
  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.
Raphael 13y ago
Good feature with redundant interface. Labels and such already appear down the left side. No need to waste more vertical space.

ams6110 13y ago

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.

anotherbadlogin 13y ago

Their defective mobile site is sure reducing message-deletion rates (since there's no Delete button).

mahgnous 13y ago

Oh waaaaah, poor spammers are losing money.

dools 13y ago

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

orangethirty 13y ago

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.

Sektor 13y ago

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

ersii 13y ago

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.

tracker1 13y ago

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.

stevoski 13y ago

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.

gufyvgv 13y ago

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