Google’s New Inbox App

Recently Google released a new email app called Inbox. This app is designed to go further than simply being a way to organize an email inbox. Instead, the new Inbox app will allow users to group emails in a similar way to the way that category tabs are currently being used in Gmail. The Inbox app can also retrieve important information even if the information is not contained in the email. If you are wondering how this new app will affect your business, here are the basics about this new technology.

Continuation of Gmail Changes

The Inbox app is considered to be an expansion upon the things that Google has done to its search engine and Gmail. In 2013, Google changed Gmail so that incoming emails were automatically filtered into tabs based on the sender. One of these tabs was the promotions tab which caused problems for online marketers because all of the email marketing newsletters from online retailers were now being dumped into a single category called promotions.

Some companies saw a significant decline in email open rates, especially those companies that rely on email marketing for bringing in sales and new customers. In the new Inbox app, there are two features called bundles and highlights which could once again majorly impact internet marketers.

Bundles

The bundles feature of the Inbox app allows users to put emails into groups in a similar manner to the category tabs in Gmail. This feature could mean that emails that a user is not really engaged with could be put into a group (similar to “Promotions” in Gmail) and simply forgotten. On the other hand, this situation could be a boon for online marketers that figure out how to get their emails into the categories that the users check and read frequently.

Highlights

The highlights feature of the new Inbox app will retrieve information that is related to an email. This feature has the capability to search for relevant information, such as the tracking status of a package, based on the tracking reference number provided in the email. Highlights is also in some ways similar to the Structured Snippets web search feature that Google launched which retrieves information from a web page that is relevant to the search result.

A feature such as highlights could prove to be positive feature for email marketers because this feature could help to decrease the time that it takes to convert a user from an email. In addition, highlights can also help eliminate errors caused by users manually searching for information related to the content of an email.

What to Do Now

Email marketing is continuing to evolve at a rapid pace. This means that email marketers need to now consider all of the convenience features of email apps that could be separating users from the marketer’s messages. As these features continue to change, marketers will need to closely monitor their analytics data to adapt to these ongoing changes.

If you need help with updating your email marketing strategy, Infintech Designs can help. Click here to request a free review of your email marketing plan today!