This is a great question, and one I expect many sellers have, so thank you for asking!
On the Square Marketing team, we’ve looked into this quite a bit, and here’s what we’ve found. You are right that this is ‘a Gmail thing’ -- Gmail controls whether our emails land in the Primary tab, the Promotions tab, or elsewhere, and it is not something we, or any email service provider, can easily affect. However, there has also been a lot of research and testing done to help us better understand the impact of these deliverability rules.
The good news is, according to a Return Path study of three million Gmail users, the tabs actually improved deliverability, increased open rates, and decreased spam complaints from email recipients. The study found it’s actually quite hard to get a marketing email into the primary inbox -- but that marketers shouldn’t be too concerned, as “instead of ignoring marketing messages Gmail users are actively searching for them and reading them at almost the same rates at which they did before tabs. Gmail has essentially created a second inbox where users hunt for email offers.” Additionally, because the Gmail tabs are optional, not all of your customers will have a Promotions tab (though it is admittedly quite common).
With that in mind, there are the few things that you could do to drive up your chances of landing in the Primary tab, such as:
- Asking your customers to add your email to their contact list.
- Asking customers to drag the email message into the Primary tab.
How do you know if you’re being negatively affected by the Promotions tab? Check your open rates. The industry averages for open rates are approximately 20-25%, depending on your line of business. Most Square Marketing customers, however, see higher open rates than this -- across the Square network our average open rates are 39%! Individual results may vary, so check your campaign results to see how you’re performing. Chances are if you’re above 25%, the Gmail tabs aren’t doing too much damage.
I hope this helps with some guidance and reassurance when it comes to Gmail. Thank you for trying out Square Marketing, and keep us posted on how your campaigns perform!
