Gmail’s New Tabbed Inbox – Sweat It or Forget It?

June 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment

A few days ago, Google announced a major change to the Gmail Inbox – the introduction of tabbed sorting for emails. All mail received will now be sorted (automatically) into predefined tabs including Primary, Social, Promotions, and Updates.

Gmail's tabbed inbox

Since the announcement, email senders have been buzzing with speculation over how the changes will affect deliverability. Many feel that promotional messages, now relegated to an out-of-sight tab, will see drops in engagement as they lose focus. Others point to the low adoption rates of features like Priority Inbox and Smart Labels as evidence that most users will likely never see Tabbed Inbox. Whichever viewpoint you take, there are some important things to consider about Gmail’s new interface.

Who will use the tabbed inbox?

It’s true that similar Gmail features have seen low adoption rates in the past. Most people, including Gmail users, are resistant to change and even fewer will actively seek it out. It’s probably a safe bet that most of the current active users of features like Priority Inbox and Smart Labels are very email-savvy and know exactly which emails they want to read – but what about everyone else?

While Gmail hasn’t made an official announcement on how Tabbed Inbox will roll out, their blog post hints that it could eventually be turned on by default for most users. Unlike previous features, Tabbed Inbox would represent a major change to the user’s existing Inbox view. If users are presented with this view by default, most are likely to accept it and adjust their habits instead of actively seeking to disable it. If the feature must be actively enabled, though, it’s likely it will have far less impact.

What does it mean for engagement?

As I mentioned in a recent article on Gmail deliverability, good delivery rates at Gmail rely heavily on recipients engaging with your emails. Upon first glance, Tabbed Inbox seems likely to decrease engagement rates as users are not able to see promotional emails in their primary view. Since this would happen to the majority of marketing emails, the relative impact should be low. If open rates for all promotional emails decrease at similar rates across the board, deliverability should remain fairly constant as well.

However, there’s also a strong possibility this could lead to a different type of engagement. Instead of viewing promotional emails as a distraction in their main email view, Tabbed Inbox could allow users to view the Promotions tab a couple of times a day or week, or only when they are interested in making a purchase. This could eventually shift the focus away from marketing copy that encourages immediate action (limited-time sales, etc) and move toward fostering longer-term engagement.

What about mobile users?

One area getting little attention in the Tabbed Inbox discussion is the mobile Gmail application. Android and iOS versions with the updated interface were rolled out just after the desktop version. The mobile version enables inbox tabs by default but handles them a bit differently, placing them inline at the top of the message list.

mobile version

Users can tap a specific tab to view all emails with that designation, or swipe the notification away to dismiss. If a tab has no new emails, the user must open the menu (by tapping the Gmail icon or swiping from left to right) and select the desired tab to view.

Previously, the Gmail application would generate a notification (alert sound, flashing LED, etc.) for any email that arrived in the inbox. Now, the default is to notify the user only when mail is received to the Primary tab. This can be changed by editing the settings (under Manage Labels), but it’s likely most users will lack both the know-how and the desire to change this. As a marketer, that makes it more important than ever to set proper expectations. Your subscribers should know when to expect your email and notice if it doesn’t show up then. This could also encourage many marketers to migrate towards building relationships and long-term engagement.

It’s too soon to tell exactly how much traction the Tabbed Inbox will gain, or what impact it will have on senders and email deliverability as a whole. In any case, it should serve as a good reminder that senders who set clear expectations, send relevant content, and prioritize user engagement are best equipped to thrive in a constantly-changing email landscape.

Brad Gurley
Director of Deliverability, WhatCounts
@DeliveryCounts

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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Feature Friday: Archive Folders in Publicaster

June 14, 2013 By Leave a Comment

You may have noticed that the most recent Publicaster update introduced quite a few changes to the Campaign Manager, particularly in the process of selecting your mailing list(s) for a campaign, as well as the particular creative that you want to use for your distribution. Something you may not know about, however, is a particularly exciting change to how you select lists and creatives: Archive Folders. In today’s Feature Friday, we’ll explore what Archive Folders are, and how you can use them to improve your use of the Publicaster platform.

The new selectors for email creatives and mailing lists are essentially the same. You can either scroll down to select the item you want:

select the item

Or you can type in part of the name of the list or creative, and it will filter the field for you:

filter

Note that you do not need to type the name of the creative or list exactly; the selector will begin filtering based on whatever you type.

Now, some WhatCounts Publicaster Edition clients may have a multitude of creatives or lists, and these may be creatives / lists that you will never send / send to again. However, they’re still showing up in the selector in the Campaign Manager, creating unneeded clutter. What a mess, right? Not at all: This is where Archive Folders come into play.

Go into either the Creative Manager or the List Manager. In the library on the left-hand side of the screen, click the button that says “New Folder.” Once you do so, name your new folder Archive, and make sure the “Root Folder” checkbox is checked:

root folder

Now that you have created this new Archive folder in the root directory of the Creative Manager or Campaign Manager, you can click and drag individual lists or creatives, or even entire folders, into this new folder:

new folder

What is the purpose of doing this, you may ask? It goes far beyond just cleaning up the library within the Creative and List Managers. When you move a list, a creative or a folder into an archive folder, those items will be automatically suppressed from the selectors in the Campaign Manager (which we explored at the beginning of this post).

So, if you find yourself faced with an unmanageable excess of items within your email and list libraries and it’s making your time with the Creative Manager a bit of a hassle, simply create an Archive folder, move your unused creatives and lists into it, and you will be on your way to an even better experience with WhatCounts Publicaster Edition!

If you need any assistance with Archive folders or any other aspect of WhatCounts Publicaster Edition, or if you would like to submit a feature request, please contact your Services Account Manager or Technical Account Manager today.

Tim Brechlin
Inbound Marketing Manager, WhatCounts
@timbrechlin

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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Analytics Tip: There Is No Secret Sauce

June 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment

skeleton keys

Analytics are kind of the elephant in the room when it comes to digital marketing. For a lot of people, opening up Google Analytics or their email service provider’s reporting presents them with a flood of numbers, and it can be difficult to make heads or tails of those numbers. Some marketers focus on their email open rate, some on their click rate, some on the click-to-open rate, so on and so forth.

One of the most frequent questions we hear at WhatCounts is, “What metrics should I be paying attention to? Which ones are most important?” The answer is both simple and complicated at the same time: Pay attention to the metrics which move the marketing needle for you. There is no be-all, end-all skeleton key of a metric that will unlock the secrets of your success.

If you are an Internet retailer, you might be tempted to go to your boss and show off your fantastic 30 percent open rates for your weekly promotional newsletter. But do those opens actually mean anything if those readers aren’t actually converting and making a purchase? (This assumes you have set up conversion tracking within WhatCounts Professional or Publicaster Edition; if you have not, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, and go back to step 1.)
Conversely, if you are a non-profit advocacy organization seeking to spread a message, conversion rates may not matter at all for you. After all, your ultimate goal is to get as many eyeballs on your content as possible, right?

There is no such thing as the general best time to launch an email. There is no such thing as the general best time to post to Facebook or Twitter. There is no one KPI in Google Analytics that tells you whether or not everything is proceeding as it should. The only thing you should be caring about is the best time to communicate with your audience. Every email list is different, every Facebook audience is different, every list of Twitter followers is different, and it’s incumbent upon you as a marketer to put in the time, energy and resources to testing the bejeezus out of those audience behaviors and figuring out what works best for the people who are actually in your network.

We have often talked about the importance of setting up goals and goal values in Google Analytics. In a holistic sense, this applies to all channels of your digital marketing mix. You need to know what your endgame is before you do anything, otherwise you’re just spinning your wheels. Ultimately, in all forms of digital marketing, you need to ask yourself three questions: Who am I talking to? What am I saying to them? And what do I want them to do as a result of seeing my message?

Once you have those questions answered, the metrics will fall into place.

Tim Brechlin
Inbound Marketing Manager, WhatCounts

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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Feature Friday: Remarketing in Professional Edition

June 7, 2013 By Leave a Comment

What is remarketing, anyway? It’s a term that’s gotten thrown about quite a bit over the last few years, but to make a long story short, remarketing is the idea of targeting communications to people who have previously interacted with you in the past: A user who has filled out a shopping cart but didn’t finish the purchase, someone who clicked on an email but didn’t complete a form, someone who may have searched for you in the past but not clicked on your search listing, someone who has opened but never clicked on an email … the list goes on.

Imagine you could see what specific part of an email a subscriber clicked and then send him or her another message based on that clicked content. Your dreams have come true thanks to our new Remarketing feature in WhatCounts Professional Edition. This feature takes information about what elements of one of your email campaigns a subscriber clicked, and allows you to send them future emails based on those clicks. You can send subscribers targeted emails based on their clicks in past campaigns, and you also have the opportunity to send personalized messages based on open and opt-out information, too.

Follow Alex Overall, one of our Technical Accounts Managers, as he takes you step by step through the Remarketing feature.

 

As always, if you need any assistance using this or any other feature in WhatCounts Professional Edition, don’t hesitate to contact your WhatCounts Services Account Manager or Technical Account Manager today. And, if you would like to learn more about WhatCounts and all the other ways we can help you deliver smart, personalized messaging to your subscribers, contact our business development team today.

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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5 Easy Tips to Make Your Subject Lines Stand Out in a Crowded Inbox

June 5, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Subject line should stand out

Crafting email subject lines can be a trying experience. You’ve tested like crazy, and you’ve made sure to personalize your emails, but you’re still not getting the open rates that you were hoping for.

The truth is that your email marketing campaigns live and die by the quality of the subject line. Some loyal customers will open anything that you send, but the rest you might lose by the second word.

So how do you get more eyeballs on your emails? Let’s go over a few quick tips that should get you more clicks!

Put the offer/information up front

The further back in the subject line your offer is, the less chance it has of being read. Position is everything and subject lines on mobile devices get cut even shorter than their desktop counterparts.

So if you’re offering free shipping on your product for a week, make sure that that the words “free shipping” appear early in the subject line. Promo codes can wait for the body of your email.

Keep your subject line short

You probably know this one already. Nobody is going to read a brilliant 20 word-long subject line where you rhyme and make an allusion to a popular piece of fiction.

What will they read? Short 8-10 word lines that give them the information they need to know.

Give it a sense of urgency

Along with the offer, you want to make sure that your customers know that this deal isn’t going to last forever. Nothing spurs people to action like the thought of missing something. Time restraints make people take action right now instead of getting to it later.

Having a longer sale? Advertising a month or week-long sale might not sound as urgent, but your follow up emails certainly will!

Make it personal

You need to dig deeper into your customer data to determine the different kinds of email subscribers that you have. Then break down your email marketing into those different groups.

If you sell social media marketing solutions to clients, the needs of a small business are going to be different than those of a large brand. So tailor your subject lines to those particular individuals. Small business owners would be delighted to read “Let us handle your social media while you focus on your business” while large brands would be more interested in “Our software lets you monitor and reply to your fans in no time!”

Triple check your spelling and grammar

Easiest way to ensure your potential customers don’t open your email? By misspelling words or using incorrect grammar. Your and you’re can be easy to switch when you’re working quickly. We’ve all used the wrong they’re, their, or there.

But when clients read the wrong word or the wrong spelling, that looks like you don’t have the time or interest to check the work you present to the world. And if you’re not going to take an interest in your own company, why would your email recipients?

Bonus tip: Be clever

Asking a clever question, adding a graphic, or mirroring presidential email marketing campaigns can have varying degrees of success. But the need to be clever should never overshadow any of these other tips.

Consumers are getting savvier about their emails and want to clean out their inbox as quickly as possible. Make sure you test your emails, but a short, to-the-point subject line can outshine even the cleverest questions.

Which would you click: “Free shipping on all apparel– this weekend only!” or “Don’t you fancy a new sweater?”

Do you use any of these tips in your email marketing campaigns? Any you’d like to share?

 

Mandy Kilinskis is a Content Developer for Quality Logo Products, a longtime WhatCounts client. When she’s not writing content for their homepage or promo blog, she’s helping craft subject lines for their email marketing. Feel free to say hi to her on Twitter or Google+!

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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The Social Ultimatum

June 4, 2013 By Leave a Comment

…consumers are now in a position to deliver a whopper of an ultimatum to businesses: meet expectations, or die.

You can thank Katy Keim for that quote in her recent article for Ad Age about building relationships with consumers via social media. She brings up many good points about this dichotomy, including that due to one bad experience with your brand on social media, a customer is usually lost to you for good. All it takes is one social post that elicits an “Eh” reaction for customers to dislike or unfollow your brand.

We’re usually focused on the idea that social media is a way for consumers to promote companies and brands, but in reality, it’s more of a place for them to criticize us. On my Facebook timeline, the businesses I follow have to compete with my best friend’s engagement photos, a funny joke from my dad, and a video of my nephew at the zoo. If their content doesn’t meet my expectations of completely dazzling me like all of the other content on my timeline does, I will stop following those businesses. Gasp!

If your heart is not thumpity-thumping a little faster at the thought of how I and many consumers like me are snubbing your brand on social media, then look more closely at the stats. According to Keim, 57 percent of social customers say they won’t buy any more of a company’s products or services after a single negative experience, and 40 percent say they are also likely to warn others to stay away after a poor experience.

That’s not good news, as is sometimes the case with the truth. But it should motivate us as digital marketers to focus time and energy on our social media strategies.

If it only takes one so-so post for a consumer to gain a negative experience with your brand, it’s worth your time and energy to spend more than a few minutes a day creating those posts. Marketing smarter means more than personalizing your email campaigns – it includes personalizing your social media updates to your audiences’ preferences so you become just as beloved as the picture of their Grandpa Joe’s birthday party.

Think.

Take your hands off your computer keyboard. Travel back to fifth grade when you had a piece of paper and a pencil and you had to brainstorm for an essay. Don’t think about what you want to say to your customers; think about what your customers want to hear about. Create a strategy for your social media, perhaps with different types of posts going out on different social media outlets.

Hold back.

Didn’t have time to strategize a perfect Facebook post for today? Then don’t post one. Remember, all it takes is one “eh” post to turn a customer away. Don’t risk it. Instead, trying sharing or retweeting a partner’s or customer’s post.

Keep an eye on social.

Your social media metrics, that is. The best way to implement personalization is giving your customers what they want. If a certain social post gets more attention than others, you need to think (again) about what your customer likes about that post and if you can create more posts like it.

social_contest

Be human.

Sell more than your products and services on social media; sell the human side of your company. As an example, we posted an office pizza-roll eating contest on Facebook and Twitter the other day. We did this because not only are we a digital marketing company with products and services, but more than that, we work as a team and enjoy life. We wanted to share that part of who we are with our social friends.

We continue to brainstorm ways to improve our social media strategy, and by no means are we perfect at it. But we want to get you thinking about how we each can be marketing our businesses smarter on social media.

Joy Ugi
Digital Marketing Coordinator, WhatCounts
@ugigirl

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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Feature Friday: Facebook Opt-In via WhatCounts Publicaster Edition

May 31, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Here at WhatCounts, we’ve always said that social media should complement your email marketing program, and vice-versa. Today’s Feature Friday will explore how you can do both with WhatCounts Publicaster Edition by creating a Facebook App to allow people to opt-in to your mailing list. After all, your list is your most valuable marketing asset; why not make it as easy as possible for people to sign up?

You’ll need just a few things to start:

1. A Facebook Page (for a brand / company / organization), not a Profile
2. A free Facebook Developer account (we’ll go through the steps of making this happen)
3. A server with a valid SSL certificate on which to host your Facebook App (we’ll explain this in a bit)

First, we want to create the actual content of our opt-in form. This is found in the Opt-In Forms portion of the Administration section of Publicaster:

facebook_optin

There are three types of forms you can build: Single Opt-in (where a user is automatically added to the list as soon as the form is completed), Notified Single Opt-in (where a user receives an email telling them they have been added to the list) and Double Opt-in (where a user receives a confirmation email with a link they must click in order to be added to the list). For simplicity’s sake, we’ll be using a Single Opt-in form.

facebook_formbuilder

Next, we’ll want to select the mailing list into which this opt-in form will “feed” the addresses. Note that you can add additional lists, so you can have this opt-in form send data to multiple lists at one time. Also, this is where you decide where you want the user to go after they have completed the form — a Publicaster landing page, a page on your website, and so on.

facebook_builder2

On the next page, you’ll select the fields of data that you want to collect; these fields are dictated by the mailing list you selected on the previous page. Note that you can enable Facebook Connect, but that wouldn’t mean much for the purpose of this exercise, as this form is going on Facebook!

Finally, you’ll see the opt-in form code:

facebook_code

We’ll need this later, but not quite right now, so leave your Publicaster browser tab open and go to another one, and navigate to http://developers.facebook.com. If you don’t have a Facebook Developers account, it’s free and very easy to create one.

Once you are logged into your Facebook Developers account, click on the Apps tab of the top navigation:

facebook_devs

Once there, you’ll see a button to Create New App; click that, and we’re on our way.

facebook_create

Choose whatever you want the app to be called. It should include the name of your newsletter and/or company so that Facebook users will know exactly what they’re getting. You’ll also need to choose an app namespace. This is a unique name for the app for Facebook’s database. You’ll also see a checkbox for free web hosting; you can ignore this, because as we’ll see very soon, Publicaster itself takes care of all the hosting!

So, before entering any information on this page, we’re going to return to Publicaster and look at our opt-in form code. The actual code of your app needs to live somewhere outside of Facebook, and there are three ways of making that happen:

1. You can copy this opt-in form code, open up an HTML editor of your choice (Nvu is an excellent open-source option if you do not have Dreamweaver), then paste the code into a blank HTML file. Save that file, and upload it to your website’s secure server via FTP. Note the https URL where this file is stored.

2. Follow the same steps as in Option 1, but — and this is where WhatCounts Publicaster Edition really shines — instead of uploading it to a secure server, upload it to your Publicaster account’s Document Manager. Because, as I’ve been hinting all along, Publicaster’s servers all have valid SSL certificates! The URL for this file will be along the lines of https://cl.publicaster.com/imagelibrary/accountXXX/documents/filename>, where “accountXXX” is the unique ID of your account:

facebook_docmanager

3. If you want to have a Facebook Page Tab that doesn’t have any branding, but is rather a simple opt-in form with no window dressing to speak of, you can bypass the first two options. Go back to the Opt-In Forms landing page in Administration, right click on the Preview button, copy the URL, paste it into a text editor, and change the domain it gives you to https://cl.publicaster.com. Set this document aside.

Note: Only options 1 and 2 allow for any branding or customization of your form, which is done by editing the HTML document you have created.

Note 2: If either Option 1 or 2 throw any errors when you deploy the app on Facebook (later), try changing the filename of your HTML file to .aspx or .php.

Configuring your Facebook App is very simple. Type in the contact email of the person who is administering the app, as well as what website domain the app is being hosted on (note: DO NOT include http:// in this section), then choose a category.

Note that wherever your app content lives, that domain should be in the App Domain section. So, if you chose Option 1 above for hosting your app content, your domain would be http://yourwebsite.com, and your secure domain would be https://yourdomain.com. If you chose Option 2 above, your Page Tab URL and secure URL would be that https://cl.publicaster.com/imagelibrary/accountXXX/documents/<filename> URL we looked at earlier. You can use the same URL for the Page Tab Edit URL. If you decided to take Option 3, go back to that text editor document you created, look at the URL you pasted in there (and remember to change the domain to https://cl.publicaster.com), and use that as your Page Tab URL and Secure Page Tab URL:

facebook_domain

This is also where you would insert a Page Tab Image, which is a 75px by 75px image that should serve as a striking call to action for your App. Make sure there are no green check marks in any other sections, and hit Save Changes; your basic app should be configured and ready to go! Note: Make sure “Sandbox Mode” is disabled. Otherwise, you will not be able to deploy it.

Now, this is where things get weird. Facebook will make you visit a unique URL once in order to install your app. Make a note of your App ID on your basic App Settings page:

facebook_settings

Open up a text editor and put the app ID and URL where the app lives into the following format:

http://www.facebook.com/dialog/pagetab?app_id=YOURAPPIDHERE&next=YOURAPPURLHERE

So, for the app I’ve been building in this demonstration, the URL would look like:

http://www.facebook.com/dialog/pagetab?app_id=516872871695078&next=http://click.bsftransmit1.com/OptInPreview.aspx?pubids=0226%7c6%7c5&digest=ScLB6ehVA6yMayCoVVYqbg&sysid=1

Don’t ask me why it works this way.

This will take you to a page where you will select the Facebook Page you want to add your app to:

facebook_add

Select your Page, hit Add Page Tab … and, voila! You have made a Facebook app!

facebook_added

facebook_app

Obviously this is a very basic implementation of a form, but if you take Option 1 / 2 above and edit the HTML, you can customize the opt-in form however you like, just like any other Publicaster Landing Page!

If you need any assistance with this process, please contact your Services Account Manager or Technical Account Manager today.

Tim Brechlin
Inbound Marketing Manager, WhatCounts

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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Gmail Deliverability Improvements: Tips and Tricks

May 23, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Gmail mailboxes

One of the questions that deliverability professionals hear most often – and with good reason – is, “How do I get to the inbox at Gmail?” Over the past few years, Google has worked to establish its Gmail product as an innovator in the area of spam filtering, enacting changes that are having a notable impact across the email industry. However, many of these changes also make it harder for senders to have their mail routed to the inbox.

Just over a year ago, Chris Penn wrote a great article on the reasons Gmail provides when a message is routed to the spam folder. This is still a great resource and is a good place to start if you find your messages aren’t getting to the Gmail inbox. In many cases, though, the answer goes beyond the explanations Gmail provides. Here, we’d like to provide a bit more insight for those times that Gmail’s answer has left you scratching your head.

Get to Know Gmail

The first step in improving your mail’s performance to Gmail is to know a little about how Google filters and routes incoming mail.
First of all, engagement is key. Gmail has built a reputation on using engagement metrics to determine mail folder placement. Senders with high engagement rates are more likely to get mail delivered to the inbox, and vice versa. To put it very simply, if your users aren’t opening your emails, those emails won’t make it to the inbox.

Gmail also uses domain reputation heavily in determining how to route incoming mail, but they don’t just weigh the reputation of the domain(s) in the From and Reply-to fields. Gmail scans the entire message for any domain that appears in the headers or body of the message. The reputation of each domain in the message, including image hosting and link URLs, is considered in the filtering process.

Cracking the Inbox

There is no single change, or even set of changes, that are guaranteed to get you to the Gmail inbox. However, there are a few things you can do to improve the chances your mail is delivered there.

Target engaged contacts. Since Gmail relies on engagement in its filtering, you should identify contacts who haven’t opened any emails in a set period of time. The recommended time period will vary depending on the frequency of your mailings, but a good rule of thumb is that contacts who haven’t engaged (opened or clicked) in 6-12 months should be suppressed or removed from your sending rotation.

Get whitelisted. While Gmail doesn’t offer a traditional whitelist, there are ways you can have your recipients add you to their personal whitelists. When a subscriber adds your address to his or her Gmail Contacts, mail from that address will bypass most filtering. If a subscriber wants to ensure he or she never misses a mailing from you, Gmail also allows creating filters that will prevent any mail from a specific email address (or domain) from ever getting routed to the spam folder.

Know your affiliates. Affiliate programs can be attractive to email marketers, but they can also be a hindrance to good email deliverability. Gmail calls out affiliate programs specifically in its Best Practices for senders, noting that they sometimes attract spammers and can be harmful to your sending reputation. If you do participate in affiliate marketing, be mindful of the partners and offers included in your mailings: The reputation of every brand or company advertised in your mailing will be considered when filtering your message. Gmail also states clearly that sending on behalf of affiliates with bad mailing practices can get your mail routed to spam.

Authenticate. Gmail uses DKIM authentication to attempt to verify the identity of mail senders. If you are not signing with DKIM, your signatures don’t match, or you are using a key less than 1024 bits in length, your mail is more likely to be routed to the spam folder.

Following these best practices is a great way to improve inbox placement, but this improvement rarely happens overnight. It’s a good idea to allow a few weeks for improvement after each round of changes.

If you have questions about Gmail deliverability or are having specific issues, please contact WhatCounts Support for further assistance.

Brad Gurley
Director of Deliverability, WhatCounts

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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