Best Practice Article

The Priority Inbox and its impact on email marketing

The increase in commercial email and spam messages we receive each day makes it increasingly difficult to manage incoming emails in our inbox. It creates a paradox of choice in deciding which emails to open, read or delete first. Simon Bowker, eCircle’s UK Managing Director analyses the different ‘Priority Inbox’ services available and offers advice on the impact these new services may have on your email marketing.

The aim of the ‘Priority Inbox’ is to ensure immediate exposure to messages more relevant to the user. The emails are selected on after an analysis of the habits and preferences of the recipient. It is designed so that users will see their messages separated into three categories, with emails deemed important and unread bumped to the top of the inbox. This changes the dynamic of your inbox and instead of priority being given to a date stamp, it is now given to relevancy. This system launched by Google in August 2010 has been enthusiastically received by users and is now available for Microsoft and Yahoo inboxes.

How does the ‘Priority Inbox’ really work?

Googlemail

The reading habits of the recipient are the most important factor. Google developed a complex set of algorithms, that analyses email usage and sorts the emails by importance. The most important factor is the level of interaction. Google knows immediately whether the interaction with a certain contact is high or low, however interaction is not guaranteed by simply clicking within a newsletter.

Marketers now need to find new and unique ways to communicate to their subscribers. The challenge has always been relevancy and this will become even more important. The intelligent combination of demographic information, customer preferences, email engagement and web analytics will be at the core of ensuring that their communication will be among the emails in the ‘Priority Inbox’ and avoid ending up in the myriad of messages dismissed as low priority.

Yahoo

Yahoo uses a very similar approach to Google, enhanced further with the integration of Yahoo! Messenger. However, this integration means that any emails in the ‘Priority Inbox’ are second place to all emails received from Yahoo! Messenger contacts. This approach is obviously not very popular with marketers but it is important to note that while you may not be a Yahoo! Messenger contact, you can still get great visibility in the eyes of the recipient.

Microsoft

Microsoft basically offers the same service that Googlemail does. Yet, the reality is that it’s the other way round, as Microsoft has offered the option of prioritising emails for several years. In this instance, there are no standard priority settings and the user has to manually select what messages they want to be considered as a priority to them. Instead of using pre-set procedures similar to Google or Yahoo, Microsoft users have the freedom to choose which messages are the most important or interesting to them. It’s a risk , but it is also an opportunity for marketers as truly relevant content is essential when communicating by email.

How to ensure that your emails will be seen in the ‘Priority Inbox’

For marketers to stand out in the inbox they must provide relevancy and value for their subscribers. As the ‘Priority Inbox’ tracks activity, brands need to become more interactive and encourage subscribers to engage with them. This can be done by focusing on optimising emails to drive the recipients to read and reply to messages or deliver time sensitive campaigns to encourage the emails to be marked as important. This makes it even more vital to have a strong relationship with your subscribers by sending welcome emails to maintain engagement and guarantee their position in the ‘Priority Inbox’. Also urge your recipients to add you to your address book, to help mark you as a trusted source. Remember if you have relevant, useful conversations with your subscribers, this will help you to become 'prioritised'.

Will these developments impact on your email marketing?

The answer is no to all companies with a strategy of targeted email marketing (sending relevant communication to their subscribers). The ‘Priority Inbox’ will only have a negative impact on the ‘mass-senders’ who do not follow best practice tactics. The development of the ‘Priority Inbox’ further speeds up the demise of those brands who have failed to make the necessary adaptations to emerging marketing trends. Recipients will punish the brands who fail to adapt or follow best practice by unsubscribing, complaining or reporting the emails as spam.

The ‘Priority Inbox’ accelerates and simplifies the process of message selection for recipients. Rather than trying to send your newsletter or email offers to the maximum number of recipients, marketers should aim to engage their subscribers to happily spread your brand merits for you. These individuals will tell their friends and create highly lucrative, forward-to-a-friend communication which happily sells your brand for you – viral marketing at its best! The ‘Priority Inbox’ can be the economic agent that heralds the rebalancing of the inbox by reducing consumer choices through behavioural accuracy and relevance to make your email stand out in the inbox.

This article is a summary of eCircle’s newsletter "Inside Digital Marketing". If you wish to receive further news from the email marketing sector please subscribe here: http://www.ecircle.com/en/newsletter