Sorted Gmail Interface

Google recently launched a new interface for Gmail.  It is slowly being rolled out to all users. The new interface automatically sorts a user’s email into three categories: Primary, Social, and Promotion.

If you are an android user, you will see a fourth tab for Google app updates. The primary tab houses your important messages.  The Social tab receives emails from your social network accounts.  The promotional tab collects all of the advertising and deal emails that you receive. 

My Gmail account was updated a week ago and I LOVE the new interface!  I can quickly see the important emails that I need to give attention immediately and easily come back later to my promotional emails when I have more time to read them. 

There is some concern that this will hurt companies who send promotional emails. They fear that users will never click over the promotions tab and their emails will get lost.

However, I think Google is doing a good job of properly sorting the emails so unless you are sending purely promotional/deal/sale emails they will not get sent to the promotions folder. I tested several of a2z’s emails today and they landed in my Primary folder.

 I personally give more time to my promotional emails now because I am not quickly deleting them just so that I can uncover my important emails in my inbox. I can sit down at night and peacefully catch up on my social and promotional emails.

 However, if you are worried that your emails will be sent to the Promotions folder then you can gently remind your readers to mark your emails as “Not Promotion” so that they get sent to their primary folder.

Ads pushed to Promotion tab

In addition, to the new interface Google has started pushing their paid ads to users’ Promotion tabs.  The ads appear as promotion emails and so they can be starred and forwarded just as regular emails, but they are ads.

The ads are not actual emails and so the advertiser is NOT secretly getting a user’s email address and sending spam mail. Google has simply changed the placement of the paid ads within the Gmail interface. The emails are marked as an “ad” under the From label and appear in a different background color. The ads used to appear at the top of the interface. 

This new placement is actually good news for Google Ads advertisers.  Your ads are reaching readers when they are in the shopping and deal hunting mind frame. And now they can easily share your deals with friends and mark them if they want to remember to come back to the deal at a later time.

New Google Dashboard

Finally, recently Google introduced a new dashboard for businesses that allows companies to manage their information and updates across Google sites including Google+, AdWords, Google Maps, and YouTube.

This change will save you time and make for a more cohesive and complete presentation of your company on Google’s sites.  For example, when your company is displayed on Google Maps the user can now see a full company profile, reviews, videos, etc.  And even more exciting is that Google now offers statistics showing the top searches for their company, where the most driving directions are requested from for their business and other basic profile stats.

These statistics will allow you to target your Google Adwords even more and shape the marketing that you post on Google sites.