Is Gmail Killing Your Email Marketing?

There was a very interesting case study written by Luke Guy, that looked specifically at double opt-in email notices originating from a collection of blogger's email newsletter signups that were sent to a Gmail Account.

According to the research, thanks to Gmail's new tab system, your emails have a much lower chance of landing in the Primary inbox tab and instead ending up in the Promotions tab, which results in much lower open rates overall.

In order to avoid this fate, your goal is to have your emails appear less promotional and more like a real correspondence. That being said, here are the most harmful things to include in your emails:

• Headers
• More than three links
• Images, including share buttons
• Email template designs

When it comes to email marketing to your clients or sending out a newsletter to an opt-in list remember to get to the point and send them something useful. Plain and simple: if your content isn't interesting or fresh, you are not going inspire people to keep you in their lives.