Your emails survived the spambots. Congratulations!
However, they don’t always make it to the Google primary tab, do they?
Yep … most of us marketers lose our best emails to promo from time to time.
Heck – I even end up in my own promo tab sometimes …
So I put together some tips I recently learned to help you deliver email to your Gmail customers in the place it will be most likely opened, read, and CLICKED … the primary tab!
1 – Clean up your list
Remove names of readers who don’t read, click … or even open your emails. Give them one last chance to stay on the list or send a targeted re-engagement campaign to your non-active segment.
If your readers aren’t interested, Google will notice and downgrade your email placement. Here’s the explanation from their guidelines for bulk senders:
“Mail classifications depend heavily on reports from users. Gmail users can mark and unmark messages as spam, and can move non-spam messages between inbox tabs. In both cases Gmail learns from user corrections and over time automatically adjusts the classification to match users’ preferences.”
2 – Tell your readers to drag your email out of the promo tab
Telling people what to do is a basic rule of direct response and it works here too. Even if it seems obvious to you, give step-by-step instructions. For example, in your introductory email, simply ask your readers to click and drag your email message to the primary tab so they won’t miss all the good and helpful information you’ll be sending.
3 – Make your broadcast look like an email to a friend
Derek Halpern of Social Triggers found that personal, plain text emails performed better for his newsletter list at DIYthemes.
And simple is more authentically personal.
After all, would you really send a personal email with a giant clickable graphic header and 5 affiliate links to a colleague? (note – clickable logos are great, according to HubSpot. Test!)
Would you begin a note to an actual friend with the words, “Dear Friend”?
Probably not …
We’d all be confused if we saw something like this:
Consider testing a plain text email, a personalized greeting, and limited links (2-3 tops!) against any other format you’re using now. Keep the links in their naked state – preferably with your domain in the URL. And if you want to use affiliate links, drive them to a webpage where those live.
These recommendations may or may not be the most effective with your particular business plan or list, but they should help your emails be seen.
Test these strategies for yourself to find out what gets the best response!
