How to stop emails from going to Promotions: 10 effective tips
Duncan
Gmail’s inbox tabs are designed to make the recipient’s life easier by sorting emails into groups: Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums. This sorting happens automatically and is dependent on a complex algorithm that relies on both your sending practices and message interaction.
While there’s no surefire way to ensure that your emails avoid the promotional folder for all your subscribers, there are steps you can take to increase the chances of them landing in the Primary inbox tab. This article will explore 10 of the most effective methods.
What is the Gmail Promotions tab?
The Promotions tab is an inbox category in Gmail that contains deals, offers, newsletters, and other bulk emails that typically include a call to action.
These are usually messages sent from businesses to promote their services, but other non-promotional newsletters may also end up in the folder.
Promotions is one of five Gmail tabs that also include:
Primary: For the recipient's most important emails
Promotions: Promotional content
Social: Messages from social media
Updates: Transactional emails like notifications, receipts and invoices
Forums: Updates from forums and discussion boards
Google introduced the tab system in 2013 to help users focus on the most important messages they receive. Unfortunately, this system also makes it harder for brands to be seen by their subscribers which can reduce the impact of your email marketing.
This can be a big deal considering a high proportion of your subscribers likely use Gmail. In a recent campaign sent by our email marketing partner MailerLite, 53% of subscribers used the Gmail email client.
The Promotions tab is not the same as the Spam folder. The messages in Promotions typically come from legitimate senders and businesses, whereas those in spam are often low-quality emails that offer zero value.
There’s also a big difference in engagement. While emails in the promotional folder get around 12% less engagement than those in the Primary inbox, they still get far more engagement and visibility than messages that go to spam, which are typically ignored.
Why are my emails going to the Promotions tab?
Emails go to the Promotions tab when the Gmail algorithm thinks the content is promotional and not important enough to be sent to the primary inbox.
The main goal of the Gmail inbox algorithm is to rank the importance of a mail without the user labeling its importance. This is calculated individually for each user.
Google uses many factors to decide how to categorize each email. The company says that the signals include:
Email content: Google scans the email to identify whether the content is similar to other promotional emails. The company looks at factors like the copy, images and links
Overall recipient behavior: Google looks at how recipients have interacted with similar content in the past
Sender’s reputation: If the algorithm thinks the account sending the email typically sends promotional content, it’s likely to send future emails to the Promotions tab
Individual recipient behavior: Google assesses how the individual receiving the mail has interacted with previous content from the sender
The last point is the most important as it means that the folder the email lands in is specific to each user. Your emails may go to the Primary tab for subscribers who read all your content but to the Promotions tab when sent to subscribers who ignore your messages.
How to stop emails going to Gmail’s Promotions tab
There is no way to guarantee that all your emails will avoid the Promotions tab. But the way Google’s algorithm works means that you can increase your chances of landing in the main folder for a good percentage of users if you can:
Encourage users to show the service that your emails are important
Send emails that don’t look like other promotional messages
Follow the below tips to achieve these two goals and help your messages stay out of the Promotions tab.
1. Ask subscribers to move you to the Primary tab
The most effective step to ensure your messages reach the Primary tab is to ask subscribers to move your emails there. When people do this, they will also get the option to send all future messages to the Primary tab.
As well as whitelisting your emails for the specific user, Google likely uses this as a positive sign that your emails aren’t promotional. This could increase the chances that your messages land in the primary folder for all Gmail users.
Ask subscribers to move your messages to primary in your welcome email. Add instructions for both mobile and desktop users so people know the exact steps they can take.
On desktop, users simply drag and drop the email into the primary tab, while on mobile, they can click the menu icon in the app and then choose “Move to” from the drop-down menu, and then choose the Primary folder.
2. Ask subscribers to add your email address to their contacts
Google says that the Primary tab is for “Emails from people you know.” Asking subscribers to add your address to their contact list will increase the chances that future messages sent from this address land in the Primary folder. Ask people to take this step in your welcome email.
3. Incentivize email responses
Google looks at replies as a signal that the sender and the recipient know each other. If you can encourage people to reply to your emails, Google is more likely to place your messages in the Primary tab.
The easiest way to generate replies is to ask a question at the end of your message and let people know that you read the responses. It can help if your messages are written by a specific person, as subscribers are more likely to reply to an individual than a brand.
You could also incentivize replies by asking people to respond to your message to enter a contest, get a freebie, or sign up for a product waitlist.
4. Minimize promotional content
You won’t be surprised to hear that emails with promotional content are far more likely to end up in the promotional folder. Not including promotional content in your messages will increase your chances of landing in the main folder.
This means avoiding stuffing your messages full of product promotions, deals, or offers. Instead, include content that provides value to the reader. Google will see this and will be more likely to send your messages to the main folder.
Not including promotional content may not be possible if the main goal of your email is to generate sales for your business. In this case, follow the other steps in this article to minimize the number of emails that go to the Promotions tab while accepting that some inevitably will.
5. Minimize content that could be seen as promotional
Even if you don’t include promotional content in your emails, Google may assume your content is promotional if it looks similar to other content that the algorithm has identified as such.
With this in mind, you should avoid adding content that is similar to the type of content you typically find in promotional emails.
This could mean not adding too many:
Images: Promotional emails will often be filled with product images
Links: Promotional emails will often have many links to products
HTML formatting: Promotional emails will often include complex email headers, graphics, and other HTML elements
This doesn’t mean that you have to send plain text emails or that all emails with lots of images and links end up in the Promotions folder. Plenty of high-quality newsletters have images, links and beautiful formatting.
But it’s something to think about if you’re struggling to get your emails into the Primary inbox.
Test email content with MailerCheck
MailerCheck’s Email Insights will analyze your email content and look for problems that could see it marked as spam. Following these best practices will increase your chances of landing in the Primary tab.
6. Personalize your emails
Bulk email campaigns tend to be impersonal, but they don’t have to be if the greeting is personalized. It’s easy to insert a custom variable like “Hi {$name},” to tailor the email and subject line for each subscriber and make it sound like a personal email to a friend.
Personalizing the content won’t directly impact whether your email goes to the Promotions tab. But it can increase email open and click rates, which may signal to Google that the email is valuable.
7. Test your inbox placement
If you’re running an Email Insights report with Inbox Insights, you can add an optional test for Gmail’s inbox. The Inbox Placement add-on sends a test email to Gmail and, based on the contents of your email, predicts which tab your emails are likely to land in.
Here’s an example of a test that showed 3 emails appearing in the Promotions tab while one email was not received, requiring further investigation into the missing email.
With the knowledge that your emails landed in the Promotions folder during this test sending, you can take steps to change your content to make it less promotional and then try again.
8. Avoid mixing email content
If you send both promotional campaigns and informational ones, use different sender addresses for each type of message.
This may help Google to better identify which of your emails are promotional and which are more informational. If Google can differentiate these emails, it may be more likely to send the latter type of emails to the primary inbox.
When choosing addresses, you could also try sending from ones linked to a person, for example, [email protected] rather than a faceless account like [email protected]. This may make your messages appear more personal and less promotional.
You should also be sure to keep your promotional emails separate from your transactional emails.
9. Send valuable content
When you create email content that people want to receive, you will enjoy higher engagement rates from your subscribers. Gmail will think your messages are important because of their higher open rates and click rates.
If you have a large email list, one way to improve email engagement is to segment your list. A mass newsletter may not interest everyone on your list but targeted newsletters or dynamic content may pique subscribers with specific interests.
10. Follow deliverability best practices
As well as the tips in this article for avoiding landing in Promotions, take some time to ensure you’re following general deliverability best practices.
For example, if you’re sending with an ESP, review your sending domain’s SPF and DKIM authentication records to convince Google that you’re a responsible and genuine sender. If you send over 5,000 messages per day to Gmail accounts, you should also set up a DMARC record.
Once you have these records set up, Google can check that you are who you say you are and that you have authorized your domain to send emails.
Other deliverability tips you can use include:
Avoiding content that can be a sign of spam, such as using all caps, overly promotional phrases, and highlighting words in red
Regularly cleaning your list to remove low-quality subscribers
Regularly sending win-back email campaigns to inactive subscribers and remove those that don’t engage from your list
Using double opt-in when building your list
Read our article to learn more about email deliverability best practices.
Focus on content subscribers love
At the end of the day, email marketers are building relationships with their subscribers. When you deliver content that they anticipate and love, you will find a way into their Primary inbox.
How do you feel about the Gmail Promotions tab? Sound off in the comments!
Editor's note: This article was originally published in 2021 and has been updated with up-to-date instructions.
