When Gmail broke the rules: What a two-day glitch taught us about user intent
Steven Lunniss, Director of Deliverability for email marketing provider Cordial, was able to answer a very important question back in January, thanks to an unexpected glitch.
The question: What happens to engagement and subscriber sentiment when your email messages are unexpectedly redirected from the promotions tab to the primary inbox?
The glitch: On January 24th and 25th, something went awry at Gmail. Google's filtering was suddenly placing messages in the primary inbox, where they would have been placed in the promotions tab (or maybe even the spam folder, depending on the sender).
The outcome: Engagement increased. But while engagement saw a lift, it wasn't much of a lift. And along with that engagement lift came an even greater boost in unsubscribes.
Steve calls this forced engagement. I think of it as a sender forcing messages in front of recipients that aren't always interested -- or when they are interested, they're interested on their own terms. (Meaning, they know where to go to find your emails when they're ready -- in the promotions tab.)
TL;DR, forcing your way to the primary inbox can have unexpected (and unhappy) consequences.
Steven Lunniss, Director of Deliverability for email marketing provider Cordial, was able to answer a very important question back in January, thanks to an unexpected glitch.
The question: What happens to engagement and subscriber sentiment when your email messages are unexpectedly redirected from the promotions tab to the primary inbox?
The glitch: On January 24th and 25th, something went awry at Gmail. Google's filtering was suddenly placing messages in the primary inbox, where they would have been placed in the promotions tab (or maybe even the spam folder, depending on the sender).
The outcome: Engagement increased. But while engagement saw a lift, it wasn't much of a lift. And along with that engagement lift came an even greater boost in unsubscribes.
Steve calls this forced engagement. I think of it as a sender forcing messages in front of recipients that aren't always interested -- or when they are interested, they're interested on their own terms. (Meaning, they know where to go to find your emails when they're ready -- in the promotions tab.)
TL;DR, forcing your way to the primary inbox can have unexpected (and unhappy) consequences.
Read the whole story over on the Cordial blog.
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