Is Gmails new layout the end of Email marketing?

As you may already know, there have been some changes to Gmail recently and it features a few new additions. One of these new changes to the system is the “promotions” option and this is the home to all of the details on emails for brands and labels.

The promotions tab or area it is also known as an extremely handy new feature as it essentially works as an ‘ad email’ folder. Advertisements from Gmail will pop up in the promotions area and this then gives you, the user, the option to forward to friends or people you may think are interested. Now with this said, this of course can dramatically affect the way you control and undergo an email marketing campaign. For example, what do you do now if all of your emails are ending up in this promotions area that you know little about?

Every email campaign puts the main focus, before anything else like offers and deals, etc. This is to help direct the email straight into the receiver’s inbox rather than into their spam list. Any email identified as spam will automatically ruin your chances of engaging with the people you want to. The new ad inbox on Gmail however will change all of this for you.

Since the changes and the promotions tab, many marketers have predicted it could mean the end of email marketing altogether, it simply won’t be as effective however this is not true. The director of Jiffy Lube marketing, Jeffrey Lack, claims he has over one million contacts to send emails to and does not think anything has changed drastically. “We’ve found there’s been really no impact in our business overall. In fact, since the redesign launched, we’ve seen no change in [email] open rates, and response rates have stayed almost exactly the same,”

This could of course be a one-off or an outlier, however, it does look like a lot of companies are reporting there has been little or no change in figures. The new features that include separating your mail into five different categories (one being promotions) is still brand new, so we should sit back and wait to see if any companies state the opposite, so far, there have been quite a few companies reporting back with no change, so for now, there’s nothing to worry about for email marketers.