Sending email marketing to Gmail is not without any challenges. The most common issue is figuring out how to persuade people to open and read your emails.
From here, we should consider how an email is well-received by the recipient. Gmail, for example, handles incoming emails into the inbox in a different way.
Why Gmail?
Gmail, without a doubt, is the most widely used email service in the world. At the very least, it controls a 27,2% share of the global email market.
In Indonesia, Gmail is still widely used by the general public.
As a result, it’s not exaggerated to say that we give more special attention and care to Gmail than to other services.
We can now put the strings together after sending emails marketing to Gmail after a long time.
That is how readers or emails recipients may communicate with us via email and interact with them.
Email Is A Team Game
Email marketing is like a team game.
There are several players involved in a game, each has its own set of roles, and all of them affect one another.
In email marketing, there are 3 key players, namely:
- Email marketing service, for example, KIRIM.EMAIL
- You, as the owner of the email database
- Your email’s subscribers or recipients.
Each of the above players has a distinct role to play, but just like in any other game, we may not be able to control everything.
So, what’s the best way? Just focus on what you can control; in this case, just focus on what you can control when sending emails marketing to Gmail. In this article, we’ll go over that in more depth.
The Art Of Email Marketing To Gmail: 6 Things You Can Control To Send Better Email Marketing
In general, there are 6 things we can control when sending an email marketing to Gmail, with the final result that our emails are sent properly, interacted with, and converted well.
What are the 6 things?
- Preparation phase
- Email list data source
- Pre-interaction
- Initial interaction
- Follow-up interaction
- Delivery frequency.
Now let’s discuss them one by one.
Preparation Before Executing Email Marketing
In email marketing, the preparation phase is the most crucial one.
If this preparation is done thoroughly, carrying out your email marketing activities will be lot easier.
Several things must be done as part of this preparation phase, including:
Validating Email Addresses
At this stage, double-check all of the email addresses to which you’ll be sending an email marketing or offer letter are really active.
If you have a lot of dead email addresses (we call them “zombie emails”), apart from wasted costs, this also might cause damage to your sending reputation in the eyes of Gmail.
Eventually, your open rates will drop, as will your click rates. And your conversion rates will end up much lower.
How can you validate email addresses? Find out how to do it here.
What is a zombie email? Learn it here.
Using An Email Address With A Reputable Domain
After validating email addresses, you need to prepare an email address with a reputable domain as your sender.
An email address with a reputable domain will directly affect the success of sending email and even receiving email on the recipient’s side.
You may look up a domain’s reputation using the Domain Lookup tool, which you can find when you do a Google search.
It is better for the sender to use an older domain with a good reputation. New domains tend to have poor delivery rates.
Up to this point, we’ve prepared the most basic of email marketing strategies. Next, we’ll move on to the next stage, which is the email list data source.
Email List Data Source
The second most basic thing about email marketing is the data source.
Why is it matter?
If the data source you are using is good, and the prospective recipients agree to receive email marketing from you, your delivery will be good.
On the other hand, if you receive a database from a poor data source and your prospective recipients disagree to receive email marketing from you, your reputation will most likely be poor.
Of the many ways to get a database, opt-in or have people register their own email addresses using the form we give is the best method for you to use.
How come?
When you are using an opt-in feature, prospective recipients register their email addresses and allow you to send them emails.
Double opt-ins and single opt-ins are the two most common forms of opt-ins.
When you use double opt-ins, the email address registration by a prospective email recipient will be in 2 steps, namely registering an email address and confirming the email address by clicking on the link in the confirmation email.
With these 2 steps, we can ensure that the email address is active and emails sent can be accessed by prospective email recipients.
Unlike double opt-ins, single opt-in is a shorter email address registration where prospective email recipients only need to register their email address without having to click on the confirmation link in the email.
However, this single opt-in is not entirely secure; it’s particularly vulnerable to being inserted by zombie emails, spammers, and typos in email address registration. That’s why we can’t highly recommend this method for you.
However, at KIRIM.EMAIL, we have our own new opt-in method that is only available at KIRIM.EMAIL.
It’s called Magic Opt-in, which is as simple as single opt-in but much more secure as double opt-in.
You may change the URL in the confirmation email to the link you want, such as a link to an ebook, a link to a discount page, or a link to a product page.
This way, you can reduce the impact of poor data sources on your database.
But what if the zombie emails still go through?
Don’t worry! In KIRIM.EMAIL, we have an automated cleaning tool called Zombie Emails Removal (ZER) that cleans dead and damaged email addresses every month.
Pre-interaction
What’s the Email’s Sender and Subject?
Here we need to figure out who will be the sender of emails marketing to Gmail regularly. What’s the point here? It’s very likely that if the subscribers know who the sender is, they’ll be more inclined to open your email.
Email marketing, after all, is all about your connections with your subscribers. It’s difficult to expect your email marketing to bring you results if the subscribers don’t recognize the sender.
You may use the sender’s identity to match your brand, for example, Hasbi from KIRIM.EMAIL or Fikry from KIRIM.EMAIL. That way, subscribers will recognize you as a person as well as your brand.
Furthermore, as an email marketer, it’s also important to create a compelling email subject that can lure people to click. It’s even best if the email subject is as short as possible while reflecting the context of the email being sent.
As much as possible, we can avoid the email’s subject containing spammy or prohibited terms.
We’ve already noted that there are around 250+ taboo words in email marketing that you can read about here.
Use Whitelist
Whitelist is a special page that contains an invitation for readers to check whether your first email went to spam or not and ask them to move it to their inbox and mark them as important.
A thing to consider, we can’t force them to do this. But, we can make them respect us with good email content.
And this is why the email’s sender and content are very important to pay attention to.
The whitelist page itself doesn’t need to be too fantastic; it may just be a simple page like the one we have here.
Initial Interaction
Instagram has Like, Comment, Share and Follow features as its main interaction. Likewise, Youtube also has Like, Dislike, Share and Subscribe features for the interaction.
In Gmail, we have open, click, and reply features as the main interaction.
Mark as spam, delete, and block are the other features, but they don’t really cover Gmail’s main interactions.
Before we get into the other interaction, let’s discuss the first interaction, which is open.
The main key to all types of email is the open and opened email.
Whether it’s marketing emails, transactional emails, or collaboration emails, there’s no interaction if you don’t open it.
If there is no interaction, then there’s no transaction as well.
It’s as simple as that.
Even though the interaction is very simple, we need to keep in mind that in Gmail, the opened email has nothing to do with folders.
For example, your email may be in the Promotion folder or even in the SPAM folder. But if the email recipient wants to open it, then the folder is not an issue, and that’s even a bonus for you to determine how the next interaction will be.
Then the question is, how do we keep our emails open by the recipients?
The key is in its subject.
In addition to avoiding the 250+ taboo words above, you can use the following tricks so that your emails will be opened and read by the recipient:
- Use subject personalization. Mention the email recipients’ names in your email subject.
- Use a subject that makes people curious. The easiest way is to use the question as the email subject.
- Use emojis in your email subject.
- Use numbers. Psychologically, humans are more interested in numbers than letters.
- A maximum of 60 characters in Email subject; so that your email subject is shortened and be fully displayed.
- Raise the up-to-date issue. There’s nothing wrong with you discussing the hot topic in your email as well.
Follow-Up Interaction
After the initial interaction, where the email has been opened and read by the recipients, then your email will get follow-up interactions.
This follow-up interaction includes:
- Click
- Reply
- Mark as not spam.
Click
Whether promotional or transactional, every email most often contains a link that can be clicked.
The goal is only one: to lead email recipients to another page that we’ve already selected.
For example, there is a link to a landing page in the form of button in your email marketing.
This button will generate interactions in the form of clicks, adding up to the total number of clicks.
One of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of an email marketing campaign is the number of clicks.
Indeed, after the recipients open the email, the next challenge is to encourage them to click on the CTA.
Because many opened emails don’t always indicate a lot of clicks, there are many cases where the open rate is high, yet the click rate is low.
So, to overcome this, we provide you with some tricks that you might try to increase the interaction in the form of clicks in Gmail:
- Clear CTAs. If you want readers to click on the link, give the command to click. For example: Click here. If the command you want is to read, then give the command to read, such as: Read here.
- Look different with formatting text. The goal is to make it stand out from other text so that readers are aware that there is a clickable link.
- Use buttons. This is a proven way to increase your Click Rate by up to 2x. Before using this button, the average Open Rate was only 6-7%. But after using the Open Rate button, it jumps to 14-15%. Before using the button, the click rate was 7%, and after using the button, the click rate was 19%.
Reply
In email marketing, every email replied is gold.
Why? Because once you get a reply email, Gmail will consider your email to be an important email, and it’s already a part of Gmail’s algorithm and other email systems as well.
When Gmail already considers your email an important one, it will have a good impact on your email reputation. The better your email reputation, the better the email delivery rate.
Unsubscribe
The next follow-up interaction is unsubscribing.
Maybe, for some email marketers, the unsubscribing may become a source of anxiety in and of itself.
Tired of collecting email lists, but then many of them unsubscribe.
But if you know the secret, it will never bother you again, no matter how many unsubscribes.
The secret is that “Unsubscribe is bittersweet.” But as bitter as it is, it’s much better than someone marking your email as spam.
In email marketing, unsubscribing is normal, as coming and going is also normal.
With this mindset, you can focus on the people who are actually interested in your content. You should even thank people who have unsubscribed from your list as well.
In email marketing, the unsubscribe rate depends on the industry. However, the reasonable limit is 0.2% – 0.5% of total subscribers.
So, if the people who unsubscribed from your list are still in that range, you can still relax. However, if it’s more than that, something wrong with your email marketing has to be addressed right away.
Delivery Frequency
Last but not least, when it comes to sending emails marketing to Gmail, we also need to focus on the delivery frequency.
It’s about how many times a week you email your subscribers.
There’s no definitive answer to the question of how many times you must send emails in a week.
However, based on our experience and information from numerous sources, ideally, we should send marketing emails between 3-4 times a week.
And If you can send emails every day, that’s even better.
But if it might be too heavy for you, it’s also okay to send an email at least once a week.
Consistency is the key. It’s all about how regularly and consistently you send out emails, not about how many emails you send.
Once a week but consistently for years is better than sending marketing emails every day for a month but not sending emails anymore for the next month.
Then the dilemma is, how to be consistent?
The answer is to create an email content strategy for the following month, semester, or better year.
Simply make a table, fill it with the email subject and outline the email content.
To boost your email conversion rate, align this content strategy with your offer.
If you have a social media account, such as Instagram or TikTok, don’t forget to integrate it with your other content on those channels.
So that the content of your emails with offers on social media is integrated and in sync.
Email Entering Spam – Who Says?
Even if you’ve followed all of the steps above, it doesn’t guarantee that your email won’t go to Spam.
This is due to the subjective nature of Gmail. Your email will go to Primary, Promotion, Update, or even Spam, depending on many things, one of which is how your email interacts with the recipients.
Your email might be directed to Primary, while your friend’s email might be directed to Spam.
Consider sending an email marketing to 10 people using Gmail. Of those 10, it turns out that 3 are in Spam, 5 are in Primary, and 2 are in Promotion.
Following that investigation, it turned out that the 3 spams were caused by infrequent interaction with your email, including opening emails, clicking links, and even replying to your emails.
On the other hand, those who enter Primary are more likely to open emails and often reply to emails you send.
So that’s why the email we’ve sent cannot always be a reference or benchmark whether it will go 100% to Primary or 100% go to Spam.
In Gmail, there will always be a wedge between the two or between other folders.
The Most Common Issue In Practice
In email marketing, time is part of the main raw materials since it can determine whether your email is sent to Gmail or not. Therefore, it will be very challenging for your email to be well-received by Gmail without sufficient time.
Gmail, also its similar services, take some time to investigate and determine if your email isn’t a spam. Especially if your domain is new or you’ve never sent emails marketing to Gmail on a large scale before.
Most people, on the other hand, only rate their initial email delivery that happens to be spam. In fact, Gmails only need enough time, that may be not too long, to be sure that the email you sent isn’t a spam, then Gmail can move your email to another inbox.
Again, getting into spam in email marketing is not absolute and permanent, and neither is getting into the inbox.
Every email may experience different things depending on its interaction with the email recipients.
SPAM Is Not The End
In KIRIM.EMAIL, we have concrete evidence that emails that go to SPAM are also answered, even generating sales.
Remember that: Many people have to open the SPAM folder to delete the emails inside.
It might be for various reasons, including freeing up storage capacity or checking emails from friends or other colleagues whether they are in SPAM or not. And that’s also where your email may be found.
In the end, SPAM isn’t the end of your email, there may be a slight delay from what you expected (again, a matter of time), but it can still lead to interactions and even sales.
How do you do it?
Send It to Humans
Behind all of Gmail’s algorithms, labels, and filters, in the end, there are humans who actually read your email. They breathe and also have other things to do, just like you. They also don’t want to read boring emails, again, just like you.
Therefore, all you need to do is only to write as if you were sending an email to your close friends or your family who may live far away; simply compose a heart-to-heart email to one person.
So far, the humanizing strategy has been our most successful email marketing campaign.
Don’t waste your email readers’ time. Instead, start writing a great email that your email readers are happy to receive and read the email from you even though it contains a promotion.
Happy emailing!
