Avoiding the Gmail Promotions Tab

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A Google proprietary algorithm automatically assigns each incoming message to a category in Gmail. Based on its content, an email thus can land either on the primary, social, updates, forums, or promotions tabs. Unfortunately, the read rates and recipient engagement are significantly lower in the last four categories. However, you can still increase the probability that your marketing emails arrive in your customers’ primary inboxes.

What Is the Promotions Tab?

Gmail uses the promotions tab to place marketing and bulk emails, advertising content, and deal offers. This type of content has characteristics that cause the system to classify them in that category:

  • Lack of correct formatting
  • Too many links or images
  • Small text to HTML ratio
  • Presence of several sales-related phrases (i.e., Make money, Get paid now, Free gift card, Best prices, No credit card, and so on) or spam words in the subject line or body
  • Poor customer personalization
  • Cluttered footers

You can minimize the risk of Gmail identifying your messages as promotions for each item in the above list.

Suggestions to Avoid the Promotions Tab

Use Correct Formatting and Etiquette

Stick to only one web-safe font in the email body unless the design requires two or more for a good reason. Refrain from utilizing all uppercase words, abusing exclamation or question marks, and merely relying on spellcheckers to identify problems. To proofread your messages, Prisma Campaigns allows you to request a review and send test messages before publishing the changes in a campaign.

Do not include more than three links or images (besides the unsubscribe link). Since you want to tell your customers how to engage with the campaign, remove any distractions and links to your social media pages. If necessary, one of the links can redirect to your website. Outside the email body, you are free to incorporate more graphic resources and ways to get to your social networks.

Reduce the HTML Content

To achieve better results, create plain text or light HTML email templates. If the code part exceeds 60%, there are more chances that your communications will end up in the promotions tab. Visually striking messages require a significant amount of HTML code and signal that an automation tool sent them instead of a human.

Abstain From Excessive Marketing Language

Prepare your messages carefully without too much promotional language. Also, if the subject line includes currency signs or hints of sales, they will turn up on the promotions tab. Use tools like MailTester to check your content and get a spam score (the lower, the better).

Personalize Your Messages

Create your email content and configure it taking the following suggestions into account:

  • Turn on the translation switch if your campaign targets customers speaking different languages.
  • Use variables in the subject and body to address each customer by name and create a feeling of belongingness.
  • Customize the message for the individuals that meet one or more conditions.

Send Relevant Content

Through segments, Prisma Campaigns enables you to communicate with customers with similar characteristics. With this in mind, your campaigns should include offers that appeal to their unique needs. Although Gmail may not raise a flag if the content does not correspond with your customers’ interests, it can cause them to move your messages to the promotions tab -or worse yet, to their spam folder- themselves.

Tidy up the Footers

Remove unnecessary content from the footer (long lists of disclaimers, terms and conditions, etc.). Instead, reserve that area for your contact information, the unsubscribe link, and other significant -but brief- details.

Additional Actions

In addition to the above suggestions, other things outside the message may impact how Gmail categorizes it. To make the algorithm your friend, do all you can to get your customers to trust your emails and configure the email service appropriately.

Have Your Customers Whitelist You

The most effective method to ensure that your marketing emails reach the primary inbox is to ask your customers to include you in their allow list. To do that, they need to

  • Click Add to contacts when they hover the cursor over your name at the top of the email:

Adding the sender to the Gmail contact list

or

  • Drag your messages from the promotions tab into the main area and confirm that they want Gmail to do the same for future messages:

Moving selected messages to the primary tab automatically

Check Your Email Service Provider

Free email service providers (ESPs) or similar platforms are not ideal for marketing because they tend to inject their logos or links to promote a paid tier. This inconvenience raises the probability of your messages arriving in the promotions tab. You can increase the control over the content of your emails if you use an SMTP server or Mailgun with your domain and a personalized address.