It took a lot of effort for e-marketers and operators to actually find the way to go through GMail, and end up as a mail inside the Inbox, and not into Junk folders. GMail was actually a beta thing, it wasnt until 2009 that Google launched its alpha version, but for the pain of many mailers, newsletters, e-zines, etc... to comply with GMails junk filters was hell of a challenge since its early stages (back in 2004).
Worst of all, those great filters were one of their great features, everyone wanted a GMail account, but as most of Google important apps, there was an "invitation" stage, where just few users could test and use it. There are now 176 million monthly users/accounts, which means... its a BIG potential client cluster, still, its hard to break junk filter has been also evolving, learning, catching.
If any follows the "anti spam" rules, their mail will pretty much have a 25% chance to go all the way down into the Inbox. So, e-marketers, bulk mailers, and friends had a nice chance to hit their potential market, but now... all this is about to end, for good. Its time to deliver quality, not quantity.
Google just launched a new feature within GMails tools, its called "Priority Inbox".
"The Priority Inbox alters the way email is listed in your inbox. Emails are now organised in descending importance (as calculated by Google) instead of by time. The goal, which is explicitly laid out in its launch video is to promote emails from people you know, and demote marketing emails that you aren�t interested in." Some of the actions that will help the system determine mail priority are involved with reply rate, and so on.
Seems that one of the Aprils fool Googles joke will come true, well... kind of.
"On April Fools Day 2009 Google introduced a service called Gmail Autopilot by CADIE.
According to Google, the service purported to automatically read and respond to emails for the user. It appeared to work by analyzing messages for the emotions expressed in the message and either providing advice to the user or automatically responding to the message."
Well, Priority Inbox will surely not reply to your messages, but it will analyze them (among with your common actions through your mail habits), and it will "advice" you what will probably be most important, interesting and so on.
So how will marketers handle it?
The so famous "creative subject" strategy to create opening status is coming to an end, which means it will be the content that will actually generate the right markers to this new tool to keep it on top of other mails. Finally its time for marketers to worry about engagement based on information, and not just "fancy clever subjects lines".
How to achieve it? I couldnt agree more with Riaz Kanani, alliances director at Lyris.
RECENT BROWSING behaviour will be the master key to generate both: an actual interesting subject, but most of all, a totally customized mail content based on real user interests. Which means, its time to listen to the user... without showing up a registration form to receive this data.
Then again, technology beats wannabes, and Im so happy about it, its been a long year where suddenly thousands of "digital gurus" appeared from nowhere, well.. this kind of things will filter (just as the Pirority tech) the ones that do understand and preach digital, from the ones that just repeat what theyve heard and bluff about something they barely understand. To understand and use properly any browsing behaviour asks for expertise and time...so BEHOLDDDDD the power of GMail, Im so much loving all this...!