The New GMail Inbox and How it May Hurt Your Internet Business

For some couple of days, the new GMail inbox has been on the roll out by Google. I can see the new look in one of my GMail address but not yet in the other GMail address. You too must have seen this new GMail inbox. The new GMail inbox is good looking but it may hurt your internet business.

 

The New GMail Inbox

You get a lot of different types of email messages from friends, social notifications, deals/offers, confirmations, receipts, and lots more. GMail is getting a brand new inbox on desktop and mobile that puts you back in control using simple, easy organization. Which means, all these email categories will be separated in different tabs (groups) i.e. Primary, Social, Promotions and Updates

 
On the desktop, the new GMail inbox groups your emails into categories which appear as different tabs. You simply choose which categories you want. Your inbox will be organized in a way that lets you see what’s new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when. (See image below for an exmaple)

 
The new GMail inbox can be easily customized. You can select the tabs you want from all five to none, drag-and-drop to move messages between tabs, set certain senders to always appear in a particular tab and star messages so that they also appear in the Primary tab.

 

How it May Hurt Your Internet Business

Even though the new GMail inbox is rolling out gradually, all your clients and email subscribers who uses GMail will soon get the new inbox. The truth is, you cannot decide for them if they should keep using the new GMail inbox or they revert to the classic inbox. Also, there is a high probability that the emails, followups and nesletters you send to your clients/customers and subscribers will be sent to the promotion tab. The problem with this is that most of your clients and subscribers will miss the emails you send to them. This is simply because they may never check the promotion tab as soon as possible. It will be convinient for them to read the emails in the primary tab of the new GMail inbox.

 
How Do You Fix This?

It’s simple but you will need to constantly remind your customers and subscribers to do either of the three fix below.

 
1. Ask your clints and subscribers to always move (drag-and-drop) the emails they receive from you from the promotion tab to the primary tab

2. Ask them to always check the promotion tab for the emails sent by you from a particular email address you use for sending the emails.

3. You can also ask them to configure their new GMail inbox in such a way that the emails from you will be sent to the primary tab. To do this, ask them to click on “More” in their GMail, then click on “Filter messages lie these” and also choose the category of the filter to be “Personal”.

 
By doing any or all of the three fixes, your marketing and sales (promotion) emails will be shown in the default primary tab of the new GMail inbox.

 

Originally posted 2013-07-20 18:17:53.