What’s the read rate for emails in Gmail’s Promotions tab?

Chart of the Day: Gmail inbox placement and read rates

In 2013, Google rolled out its restructure of the Gmail inbox and introduced their tabs layout. Back then email marketers believed it would be the "death of email marketing". So we are nearly 4 years since the launch, how are marketing emails performing in the Promotions tab?

In the chart below, we see that Promotions has an Inbox Placement Rate (IPR) of 84.5%. We can also see that the read rate is the lowest of all the tabs, at a low 19.2%.

This tells us that out of all the promotion emails, in the tab, only 19% are read. So 81% of marketing emails will be simply deleted/unread. So if you land in the Promotions tab, chances of getting read are very slim.

What can i do?
First, check if you need to worry about Gmail by looking at your email client share statistics in your reporting. If the share is nominal, it may not be something to worry about. But keep an eye out if it suddenly increases. However, if your client base is largely Gmail-focused, there are a few things you can focus on. For example, doing extensive A/B testing.

But has it killed email? Not in my opinion - it has made us better email marketers. We can no longer blast send our clients and have to make our emails more personalised and relevant. Which isn't a bad thing.

Download original guide: Return Paths "The Email Marketer's Guide to Gmail Categories".

• Source: What’s the Read Rate for Emails in Gmail’s Promotions Tab?
• Sample Size: More than 6 billion messages sent to Gmail users between 20th and 27th October 2016.
• Recommended Resource: Email Marketing Toolkit

Contributer : Smart Insights