The Email Marketer's

Guide to Gmail Categories

Analysis of Consumer Adoption
Primary
and Placement Accuracy

Updates
Promotions

F
Social

Promotions

Updates
Prima

Social

Primary

Forums Social

Updates

The Email Marketer’s Guide to Gmail Categories [ 1 ] returnpath.com

 Table of Contents

Introduction to Gmail Categories 3

The Initial Impact of Gmail Tabs 4

How Many Users Have Enabled Gmail Tabs? 5

Do Users Find That Gmail is Accurate in Sorting Email? 6

Which Tabs Have Users Enabled? 7

How Often Do Users Check Their Promotions Tab? 8

Volume Breakdown by Category 9

Inbox Placement and Read Rate by Category 10

What is the Top Tab Per Industry? 11

Tab Classification by Unique Subject Line 12

Conclusion 13

Methodology 13

The Email Marketer’s Guide to Gmail Categories [ 2 ] returnpath.com

 Introduction to Gmail Categories
It’s been nearly four years since Gmail started rolling out its own solution
to “inbox overload” with its tabbed inbox and email categories. To help users
sort through their inbox maze of promotions, personal email, and purchase
confirmations, Gmail started categorizing all incoming email with the
following labels:

Social Social notifications and updates

Promotions Email marketing promotions and offers

Transactional emails like receipts and

Updates
shipping notifications

Forums Mailing lists and groups

Personal emails and messages from other

Primary
categories where the tab isn’t turned on

Though Gmail offered the capability to sort email into these five different
categories, individual Gmail users needed to enable tabs to unlock their tabbed
inboxes and begin seeing their email filtered by category. Once enabled, users
were able to select which configuration of the five available tabs they wanted.
If emails couldn’t be classified, they were labeled as “unknown” and run
through more spam filters. If these unknown emails were ultimately deemed
safe and wanted, they would then be placed in the Primary tab.

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 The Initial Impact of Gmail Tabs
The introduction of this five inbox system was met with a lot of hostility by marketers. Many assumed
that with the new Promotions tab, subscribers would no longer see nor interact with their messages.
Some even claimed these tabs would “kill” email marketing. Many marketers even began a “move me”
campaign asking subscribers to mark their messages as Primary in an attempt to get their emails
delivered to the Primary folder.

To find out the true impact of Gmail tabs, Return Path released two research papers measuring the
initial and six month impact of Gmail tabs on response rates. At the time, we compared the response
rates for those that opted into tabs and compared open rates before and after the roll out. What we
found was that impact varied significantly across different industries. Many industries saw a slight
decline in key email marketing metrics, a number saw no change, and some even saw much higher
read rates.

During the rollout of Gmail’s tabbed inbox in 2013, Return Path was also able to determine which
tabs users enabled in their inbox. At the time, 77 percent opted to use the Social tab, 46 percent
activated the Promotions tab, and 46 percent used the Updates tab. Only six percent used the Forums
tab, and virtually no one (0.25 percent) chose to simply direct all messages to their primary inbox with
no tabs enabled.

Now that four years have passed, we decided to see what impact Gmail’s tabbed inbox is having
on both users and marketers. Are marketers still asking subscribers to move their messages to
the Primary tab? If not, should they? Are Gmail’s classifications accurately classifying messages?
If not, what can a marketer do? We’ll answer these questions and more in our latest look at Gmail’s
categories and tabbed inbox.

Gmail Tabs Usage Survey

To uncover how Gmail users are using Google’s tabbed inbox today,
Return Path surveyed 1,628 Gmail users on December 15, 2016, using
Google Consumer Surveys.

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 How Many Users Have Enabled Gmail Tabs?
A lot has changed in the past four years. From its initial mass adoption, Gmail tabs are now used by
slightly more than one in three Gmail users (33.8 percent). This equates to a 66 percent decrease in
users since 2013.

As many Gmail users opt to return to one centralized inbox, the impact of Gmail tabs on email
marketing has decreased significantly, but is still an important factor to consider.

Do you currently use Gmail tabs to sort your email?

Yes 33.8%

No 66.3%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

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 Do Users Find That Gmail is Accurate in
Sorting Email?
If your messages are delivered to the spam folder, the chances of your subscribers interacting with
them are very slim. The same principle applies to Gmail tabs. If messages are not delivered to the
location subscribers expect, they won’t see them.

As a marketer, it’s important to ensure your emails are being classified correctly as either Social,
Promotions, Updates, or Forums. A misclassified email can result in lower open rates and cause a bad
user experience. Case in point, one Gmail user indicated she missed a flight because her plane ticket
was misclassified as a Promotion rather than an Update.

We asked Gmail users if they found that Gmail was accurate in sorting their emails. Almost one in 10
responded that Gmail is misclassifying their email. Email that is incorrectly sorted—and then delivered
to the wrong tab—will be hidden from Gmail users who are expecting it elsewhere. This could mean
that an inbox placement rate of 80 percent is actually closer to 70 percent after factoring in those
misclassified. To make sure messages are delivered where they are expected, marketers need to be
monitoring the Gmail tabs classification of all their messages.

Does Gmail accurately sort emails to the correct tab?

Yes, Gmail is accurate 90.8%

in sorting my emails

No, Gmail doesn't 9.2%

sort emails correctly

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

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 Which Tabs Have Users Enabled?
Much like in 2013, Gmail users are most likely to use the Social and Promotions tabs. Today, Social is the most
used tab, enabled by 68.1 percent of users, followed by the Promotions tab with 60 percent adoption.

The Updates tab, which saw the same level of usage as the Promotions tab in 2013, has dropped to one in four
users. This lack of adoption is likely a result of the fact that the Social and Promotions tabs are enabled by
default when a Gmail user enables tabs, while Updates requires users to manually enable.

What Gmail tabs do you currently have enabled?

Social 68.1%

Promotions 60.0%

Updates 26.7%

Forums 13.3%

None of the above 20.1%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

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 How Often Do Users Check Their
Promotions Tab?
Gmail users use the Promotions tab in a variety of ways. Based on the results of this question, we
see that almost half (45.1 percent) of Gmail users are checking their Promotions at least once a day.
This shows that they are using the Promotions tab to filter their marketing messages for easy access,
enabling them to quickly react to these offers.

One in five Gmail users takes a different approach to the Promotions tab. Despite having the tab
enabled, 19.9 percent of Gmail users never check the Promotions tab. Instead, they use this tab as a way
to filter out unwanted email marketing messages from their inbox.

How often do you check your Promotions tab in Gmail?

Constantly 11.9%

At least 3-4 times a day 6.7%

At least one a day 26.5%

At least once a week 25.5%

Never 19.9%

n/a 9.5%

0% 10% 20% 30%

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 Volume Breakdown by Category
Of all email sent to Gmail users, more than 90 percent is classified as either Promotions (68 percent) or
Updates (22 percent). What’s interesting is that Social—a tab enabled by the majority of users—is only
relevant for 6 percent of email, while Updates—enabled by only 22 percent of users—would filter 22
percent of incoming email, if it were turned on.

Tabs Classification of Total Volume

Forums: 1.14%

Social: 5.97%

Updates: 22.1%

Promotions: 68.4%

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 Inbox Placement and Read Rate by Category
Messages tagged as Social have the highest inbox placement rate (87.2 percent) followed closely by
Updates (86.8 percent). Uncategorized messages struggle to land in the inbox with an inbox placement
rate of 55.5 percent.

Messages labeled as Updates receive the highest subscriber engagement with a read rate of 28 percent.
Most of the remaining classifications generated read rates between 22 and 20 percent, with Promotions
receiving the lowest rate rate at 19.2 percent.

As Gmail classifies all incoming messages into a tab, these rates are based on the activity of all Gmail
users, regardless of whether tabs are enabled.

Gmail tab Inbox placement rate Read rate

Promotions 84.5 19.2

Primary (No Classification) 55.5 22.0

Social 87.2 22.4

Forums 77.8 21.1

Updates 86.8 28.0

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 What is the Top Tab per Industry?
Using the Gmail Categorization feature of our Inbox Monitor tool, we identified the category breakdown
for each industry.

Promotions Updates Social Forums Primary

Promotions Updates
Not surprisingly, most retail industries see the bulk Industries where Gmail users are likely to hold
of their messages classified as Promotions. Pets (98 accounts—Banking and Finance (78 percent) and
percent), Sporting Goods (97 percent), and Deals & Insurance (67 percent)—see the majority of their
Rewards (96 percent) had the greatest percentage of messages classified as Updates.
messages classified as Promotions.

Social Apparel
Automotive
Banking & Finance
Business Services
Computers & Electronics
Deals & Rewards
Distribution & Manufacturing

Food & Drug

General Merchandise
Health & Beauty
Household & Home Improvement
Insurance
Jobs
Kids & Babies
Media & Entertainment

Pets
Real Estate
Service
Social & Dating
Sporting Goods

Telecommunication

Travel

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Social Forums
As expected, Social & Dating industries see the majority In most industries, it is rare to have messages classified
(69 percent) of their messages classified as Social. as Forums. The exceptions are Technology/Software/
Job search industries also see a significant portion (39 Internet and Service which include many companies that
percent) of their mail categorized as Social. manage their own help forums.

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 Tab Classification by Unique Subject Line
To test the accuracy of Gmail’s categorizations, we analyzed the tabs classification of what we call
unique subject lines. A unique subject line is one subject line that has been sent to multiple Gmail
users—for example “30 Percent Off Sale Items”—the assumption being that all emails using the same
subject line would be classified into the same tab.

In the chart below, we show the average tab classification for unique subject lines and the percent of
these subject lines being classified in multiple categories. Ideally, each industry would receive a score of
one—indicating that all messages using the same unique subject line were sorted into the same tab.

What we found is that, despite

Average Percentage of Subject
Categorization for Lines Categorized in Gmail users perception that their
Unique Subject Lines More than One Tab
email is categorized correctly,
Apparel 1.17 13 many messages are actually being
Automotive 1.11 10
misclassified.
Banking and Finance 1.13 11
Business Services 1.32 21
Computers & Electronics 1.21 16
Media & Entertainment companies
Deals & Rewards 1.26 18 saw the most disparity as their unique
Distribution & Manufacturing 1.10 8 subject lines were delivered to an
Education/Non Profit/Government 1.33 19 average of 1.35 tabs, and more than
Flowers & Gifts 1.15 13 21 percent of their messages were
Food & Drug 1.22 14
classified in multiple categories.
General Merchandise 1.18 13
This could indicate that Media &
Health & Beauty 1.19 14
Household & Home Improvement 1.14 12
Entertainment emails are harder to
Insurance 1.12 10 classify, or possibly that Gmail Users
Jobs 1.16 11 are manually re-categorizing them.
Kids & Babies 1.17 13
Media & Entertainment 1.35 21 Telecommunications had the least
Office Supplies 1.18 14
amount of miscategorization, with
Pets 1.15 11
unique subject lines being sorted into
Real Estate 1.15 11
Service 1.25 17
just 1.07 categories. In addition, only 6
Social & Dating 1.11 9 percent of unique subjects lines sent
Sporting Goods 1.14 12 by Telecommunication companies
Technology/Software/Internet 1.18 13 are classified in multiple categories.
Telecommunication 1.07 6 This indicates that emails from
Toys/Hobbies/Crafts 1.18 14
Telecommunications companies are
Travel 1.15 10
likely classified the most accurately.

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 Conclusion
Though Gmail has created one of the industry’s most advanced email classification and sorting systems,
one in 10 users believe their messages are being misclassified.

Messages that are not sorted into the expected tab are likely to go unnoticed and unopened by your
subscribers. Just as you measure your deliverability by tracking whether your messages land in the
inbox, you should pay attention to the tabs classification of all your messages, ensuring they are being
categorized correctly.

Following are some suggestions to help ensure your messages are

directed to the correct tab:

Send different categories of mail (e.g., promotions, transaction notifications, social updates) from
different, authenticated sender addresses, and try to keep those addresses consistent over time.

Avoid mixing different types of content in one email, since each message can only be sorted to
a single category. For example, putting a promotion into a transactional email may cause the
message to be misclassified as a promotion.

Source: Gmail Bulk Sender Guidelines

Methodology
Return Path created this report based on results from a Google Consumer Survey and data from Inbox
Monitor. The Google Consumer Survey ran on December 15, 2016, and surveyed 1,628 Gmail users. The
Gmail classification analysis is based on over 6 billion messages sent to Gmail users between October
20–27, 2016.

The Email Marketer’s Guide to Gmail Categories [ 13 ] returnpath.com

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