From a business perspective, Gmail’s new Priority Inbox feature may mean more to you than a better way to organize your emails.
As a business owner who uses email for marketing, Gmail’s new feature may mean your emails will be pushed down as being less important than other emails.
Since Gmail will be applying software algorithms to your subscriber’s email, there may be a period where the subscriber will have to take action to ensure that your emails stay on top of the pile.
Over time subscriber’s can manually train Gmail to recognize important emails, but there’s no guarantee that subscriber’s will take the extra steps to ensure that your emails rise to the top.
So, what do you need to do to make sure your emails are a priority in your email subscriber’s life?
Here are a few tips:
Run a report on your email list and find out how many Gmail subscribers you have, then segment them into a list that you can send targeted emails to.
- In those targeted emails include a call to action that encourages the subscriber to make your emails a priority.
- Be sure that your email content is the best it’s ever been because, if you’re trying to retain subscriber’s and encourage loyalty, then you need to give them a reason to care. They have to want to get your emails, if it’s just for a little while until you can train Gmail to consider your emails as priority.
- Be sure to use a name@ from and reply-to email address for each mailing because email system have become smart enough to know that info@ and sales@ are institutional email addresses that are used for bulk communications and not personal one-on-one emails that maybe considered important.
As email systems become more sophisticated, it will be even more important for us to pay attention to changes that may affect the reception of our messages. Gmail has pioneered a lot of firsts in the web based email space and if the Priority Inbox ideas is a success you can bet it will show up on Yahoo and Hotmail accounts next.
Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com
