6 Reasons Why Being in Gmail’s Promotions Tab Is Actually a Good Thing

Marketers have been concerned about their promotional emails landing in Gmail’s Promotions tab since Google launched Tabs in 2013. Back then, the concern was almost a hysteria, with rampant fears of Tabs causing a crash in email engagement and email revenues.

Thankfully, concerns have cooled, with marketers seeing little to no bottom line impact from Tabs. However, we still see marketers asking about how to get their promotional emails into the Primary tab and our clients occasionally see tabbing as a deliverability issue in need of a fix. Since December, our Email Deliverability Services team has experienced a spike in questions about Tabs due to inconsistent placement of emails.

“We’ve had a number of our clients ask, What’s going on?” says Clea Moore, Director of Deliverability Strategy for Email Deliverability Services, Oracle CX Marketing Consulting. “We’re seeing our promotional emails in the Primary tab, our promotional emails in the Social tab, and our transactional emails in the Promotions tab.”

She added that all the inconsistencies have caused a few clients to ask, “Is there a way for our promotional emails to continue going to the Primary tab?”

Comments like that make us hope that this episode at Gmail won’t encourage marketers to try to manipulate their tab placement, because we believe concerns over Gmail’s Promotions tab are overblown. Here’s why:

1. Email users are incredibly comfortable and familiar with how Tabs work.
2. Every tab is part of the inbox, so tab placement issues are not a sign of deliverability problems.
3. You want your emails to be where your subscribers expect them to be.
4. When consumers spend time in the Promotions tab, it’s a sign of higher shopping intent.
5. Email Annotations can help your emails stand out in Gmail, but only work in the Promotions tab.
6. Google doesn’t appreciate gamesmanship or being manipulated.

For a full discussion of each of those reasons…

>> Read the full blog post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog