Google’s New Inbox App — What It Means for Email Marketers

In October, Google introduced Inbox — a new application for desktop and mobile devices designed to help users better organize and manage their email. How will it impact email marketers? That’s what we talk about here.

Inbox — Available by Invitation Only

Google’s Inbox app is currently available by invitation only, so email marketers probably won’t experience much of an impact for the near future. And unlike Gmail’s tabbed inbox interface feature — which was rolled out over a couple of months to the entire Gmail user base — people who want Inbox will have to download the app themselves. So the effect on email marketers should be a gradual one.

A Look at Inbox’s Features

What sets Inbox apart from the current Gmail? The following are some features of Google’s new email app:

• Bundles — Similar to Gmail Tabs, this feature makes it easier for users to group and deal with the same types of emails at one time. There are premade labels in Inbox’s Bundle feature, for example, including Travel, Purchases, Finance, Social, Promos, Updates, and Forums. Plus, users can also create their own bundles and choose what type of email messages to include in them. This type of grouping helps users keep the emails most important to them on the top of their inboxes, rather than the most recent emails.
• Highlights — This feature displays content below the subject line to provide users with the important information in an email at a glance. For example, users will see such information as travel itineraries, delivery dates, as well as photos and videos. In some cases, Highlights will also show useful information from the web that isn’t in the original email, such as real-time flight status. Users can also link directly from Highlights’ content to website landing pages, which may make the open rate metric less important to email marketers in the future.
• Pin — When users “pin” an email, it will be moved to the top of their inboxes. This feature is designed to help users keep track of important emails that they may need to take action on in the future.
• Reminders — If users need to take action on an email, they can use this feature to generate a reminder that appears in their inboxes right along with all their unread emails. So with Reminders, users can essentially create a to-do list.
• Sweep — This feature lets users easily get rid of all of the emails they don’t want at once. It can be used in a variety of ways, including removing all emails in a specific bundle, a selected group of emails, or even to sweep the entire inbox, which would remove all emails except those a user has pinned.

Are You Ready for Inbox?

As these features indicate, Inbox will give users more control over their email experience. That means email marketers must build and maintain relevancy with their recipients to continue to survive and thrive today. So what are some ways organizations can help keep their email-marketing campaigns relevant? The use of dynamic content, triggered email drip campaigns, personalization, and segmentation are just a few examples of tools that you can use to help keep subscribers engaged with your email campaigns.

Is your organization ready for Google’s new Inbox? Contact the experts at FulcrumTech and we can help you confidently answer “yes” to that question. Our team will work with you to design and implement highly effective email campaigns that continue to engage and convert your target audience.

If you haven’t been invited to try Inbox yet, you can request an invitation via email at [email protected]. If you’ve already downloaded Inbox and are currently using it, we’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments section below.