If you’ve struggled with your email marketing, it may be because of one reason — your gmail campaigns land in tabs that users dare not open. Emails in one tab, in particular, get relegated to the trash section. This tab is none other than the spam folder.
As fraud has been on the rise, the search engine slash email inbox giant has been protecting against spam fraud. Depending on your settings, Google can use its algorithms to identify spam mail and give you a heads up by sending it to the designated Gmail tab.
Indeed, this sounds like good news if you’re a regular user. As an email marketer, however, you need to view this as an issue of concern. Google has algorithms for every activity, like Google searches and videos. These algorithms are difficult to outsmart. These also determine which Gmail tabs receive your marketing emails.
Nevertheless, there is hope. Here are nine ways to make your emails land in the primary Gmail tabs of your users!
1. Reduce Your Fraud and Abuse Measure by Following Google’s Gmail Guidelines
Google is perpetually protecting people from spam, fraud, and abuse. Its algorithms allow it to do so objectively and not arbitrarily — even if it appears that way to some.
Know that Google has a set of standards that govern how you ought to send bulk emails. Without going into too much detail, you only need to:
- Send your email from a personal email address that ends in “@gmail.com”
- Activate the DKIM sign in setting for your messages
- Publish or put out an SPF record and DMARC record
By following these practices, you’ll minimize the chances of your emails being sent at a lower rate. Also, following these practices will reduce the likelihood of Google branding your mail as spam mail. Ad serving is based on following these practices. It should be the basis of yours as well.
2. Limit Your Usage of Images
Unless they’re attachments, images can draw the attention of Gmail’s algorithms. In many cases, if email content and ads include a lot of images that aren’t attachments on an email, it may be branded as spam.
Whether Gmail detects personalized or generic ads can be influenced by things like media. For the most part, personalized emails contain little to no images. In fact, most may have images only as attachments.
While you can use some images, be sure to use them only if necessary and sparingly. Use them only if your ads show personalized content.
3. Use Personalized Content and Ads for Your Emails
Emailing personalized content and ads have an understanding of your audience. An understanding of your audience allows you to optimize your emails. Your optimizations can be in terms of tonality and content.
Understanding your audience will also help you determine if you should send an email or not. The best thing to do is to send emails to people from whom you have observed engagement.
Luckily, it is possible to measure audience engagement and site traffic. By using tools like Google Analytics, you can track your site’s user engagement and site statistics. You can set your site to use cookies and data to give you data on your potential recipients.
Google uses cookies and data as well to confirm an email recipient’s engagement with your site. Sending an email to an engaged user will improve the chances of the email ending up in the Primary tab.
4. Encourage Subscribers to Make Simple Changes on Their End
The first tip we have on our list is to simply advise your subscribers to add your company’s address to their contacts. Yes, it might sound too forward to ask for such a thing but people understand and more are willing to do it, from our experience.
Explain to the user how simple it is. Start by asking them to open an email from you, then click the three-dots icon on the right. From there, they can add the address to their contacts. It’s as simple as that.
5. Create Personal Emails when Possible
Analysis clearly states that if you include a recipient’s first name in the email and also add some message characteristics that aren’t just about the promotional side of the text, it will increase your chances of your content landing in the primary tab.
Keep your content short and sweet, without bombarding it with too many links and images that make emails look like spam. This will actually increase your engagement.
6. Aim to Avoid the Clutter
And by that, we mean that you should focus on sending individual messages when the situation seems fit, or at least, send your content in small batches at a time.
It’s a well-known fact that massive sending will put email providers on high alert, including Gmail.
7. Be open
Despite your best efforts, it’s still not guaranteed that your campaign will land in the Primary folder. But there’s something you can do if all else fails. Just simply, add a text at the bottom of the email. Something along these lines:
“Did this email end up in your spam folder? Please drag our message to the Primary folder to indicate that it is important.”
It’s that simple.
8. Get Straight to the Point
The effectiveness of ads show that people only need a quick prompt to cause them to make a purchase or call your company. Hence, whether your email will show personalized or generic content, you need to make your intentions clear in the subject line of your email.
Getting to the meat of what you want to say may also force you to send your emails in the most personal way possible. This can cause you to send your emails in small batches. While this may sound inefficient, this is actually a good thing.
Doing this succinctly helps you pitch your services and develop new leads.
9. Begin Tracking Outages and Protecting Your Email Arrivals With a Mail Tracker
A mail tracker can track your mail outages, also giving you insight into how many of your emails end up in spam folders. We at MailMonitor have developed a Gmail Tab Tracking feature, a perfect solution to know where your emails will land.
Time to Make Your Campaigns Land in Gmail’s Primary Tab!
Use the above-mentioned tips and tricks to make your Google email marketing profitable. To execute these strategies well, you’ll need data about where your emails end up.
Now you have the tips. And you have the software to help you on your way. Be sure to always run your campaign monitoring before sending out your content.
Track Your Gmail Campaigns with MailMonitor
At MailMonitor we’re always improving the quality of our services. That’s why we created Gmail Tab Tracking, a feature that will help you in your strategic planning for Gmail campaigns. You can see this new feature under the Delivery Monitors section in your Customer Account.
