Killing Promotions tab Gmail
Its easy to compose your email in a way that it always land up in the Primary mailbox of Gmail
Few days back when i had absolutely nothing to do, i started thinking (as if i need a reason!) about how in my inbox important mails sometimes appears in Social/Promotions tab. Then few days later i somehow developed a strange fear of my mails going to promotions tab & getting ignored by the other person. i cursed google for it then just after that i googled for it. Someone said that it is very difficult, if not impossible! The best way is to make the best content possible and keep fingers crossed that people will click on the right tab. Someone said tell your users to move the mail from promotions tab to primary tab(genius right?) Someone said that Google uses far too advanced algorithm for anyone to break.
However, after about 10 minutes of hit n trial, i realised Google uses some filters for the promotions tab. So you can follow simple rules & make sure that your spam message land into the primary mailbox.
Add some personal greetings such as “hi” “hey”
The email should be sent from an account with a first and last name.
Remove images, if any.
“Unsubscribe” links, and the number of links in the email, don’t seem to matter.
The most important change to make is to remove images. If you absolutely need images in your email, try using only one.
If you wanna dig a bit deeper..
Google throws an email to a particular tab via some algorithm that we don’t know. What we know is that algorithm is based on the activities of individual users like you & me and the rules has been applied to masses based on the pattern. For example say my relationship with Myntra.com is reciprocal, its one way. He sends me a mail daily & i never reply! He uses these words very frequently “discount” “sale” “offer” “win”. So now are you getting an idea where i’m going here?
Now google has data, a lot of global data to analyze. The algorithm should analyze the domain, the language & composition of the email, past relationship with the users & comparison to the existing data to decide where this mail will end up. Algorithm is based on assumptions which are generally accurate but it will change itself based on users feedback i.e if i drag an email from promotions to primary or visa versa, the algo will change for me.
Now think about this, why an email from your uncle always end up in primary tab but email from your clients end up in promotions tab. This is because google knows by watching your account’s activity in your uncle’s case you react (reply, forward, cc, chat, hangout etc.) Simply its the conversation between you & your uncle happening which makes that email id unique.
So you need to convince google that you’re everyone’s uncle! Let the conversation going by, say, offering the user some incentive if they forward the mail to their friends. Number of people reacting on your email is directly proportional to your reputation inside the algorithm. Another point for you if your email address is based on first and last name format rather than info@somecompany.com. If you’re wondering how on earth will the algorithm knows its not based on my name, it might compare your FirstName & LastName field with your email id.
So there you have it. i would suggest sending test emails to your own Gmail account to make sure they end up where you want them to, and tweak them a little bit if necessary. Yes, the algorithm is dynamic & it will definitely become more intelligent with time but so are we & I’m sure we’ll figure out some other way to tweak it by then.
