Back in August, Gmail introduced the Priority Inbox - a new tool that filters emails into "Important and unread," "Starred" and "Everything else" sections of your inbox automatically.
After taking some time to experiment with it, it's true that the Priority Inbox really can help Gmail users separate your emails from those less relevant ones out there based on their interaction with all of the messages they receive.
You know how important it is for your email marketing messages to be valuable, so let's make sure you're doing everything you can to make subscribers aware of the value of your emails. Keep reading to find out how!
As we've discussed before, Gmail's Priority Inbox figures out which senders' emails are important based on how a user interacts with their emails.
While some of your subscribers might understand how the Priority Inbox pertains to their daily email use, I'm willing to bet that many don't fully grasp the concept just yet.
New technological advances can be intimidating - even in instances like this when your email provider provides adequate information about the changes taking place. Instead of learning about them, lots of users will simply ignore them, preferring to use their accounts as they always have.
This means two things for your email marketing campaign:
- With the Priority Inbox activated, some users aren't even aware that they are no longer seeing your messages. They could be buried below the "priority fold."
- If your emails go to the Priority Inbox and other marketers' don't, now you have a relative advantage in the competition for subscribers' attention.
Just the other day, I happened to receive an email from Trianon Palace at Versailles letting me know that I could upgrade to a suite for a limited amount of time. (You know me, I always weekend in France, dahling.)
What was even more intriguing than the upgrade deal was the preheader of this particular message:
It contains the prerequisite "If you cannot read this e-mail, please click here" line, but then it also includes more specific instructions for Gmail users:
After examining the message from Trianon Palace, you can see that it's easy to include a preheader in every message. The only trick? Including an image of the Priority Button. Don't worry, we've made that step a little easier for you.
To use the button, simply save this image to your computer, then upload it to your website and use it in the first line of text at the top of your of your next email.
Because this preheader only pertains to Gmail users, if you were going to try this in a broadcast you might want to segment out your gmail.com subscribers and email them separately.
Do you think this is the best use of preheader space? Since this tactic would really only make sense to Gmail users, how else can you make your messages stand out in the inbox for non-Gmail users?
We'd love to hear your opinion! Share in the comments below.
Original: Inbox Ideas
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