E-mail marketing industry experts shrugged off Google’s debut of the “Priority Inbox” enhancement in Gmail this week, saying it may even help them target consumers more effectively. The feature prioritizes e-mail messages for consumers.
Priority Inbox filters incoming e-mail messages into three sections: “important and unread,” “starred” and “everything else.” Messages are automatically categorized as they arrive to a consumer’s inbox. Google is offering the feature to consumers on a rolling basis.
“Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you e-mail most and which messages you open and reply to,” Google explained on the Google Blog.
“This is a welcome change to mailers like us,” said Marc Haseltine, manager of e-mail marketing at the National Geographic Society, noting the “incredible amount of inbox clutter” many consumers experience. “I think some of what we’ll do is to be a little more proactive on segmenting our reports by ISPs so we’re not seeing any problems with what they are implementing.”
Haseltine said the company will examine deliverability, inbox placement and response rates by ISPs more closely with every campaign it develops.
Tom Sather, director of professional services at Return Path, said the move is no cause for concern for marketers who use best practices and have active user files.
“They will get an extra bonus by having their e-mails prioritized more effectively if their subscribers are engaged,” he said, adding that brands should be able to improve the subscriber’s experience in the process.
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