Marketing is always most effective when it is delivered with something else of value. If you open your postal mailbox and its nothing but ads, you tend to throw the whole bunch away. But, if one offer comes along with other interesting pieces of mail or if it includes something valuable like a gift card or a coupon, you tend to give it more attention.
The same goes for email. One marketing message that sits alongside emails from friends and family is much more likely to be looked it or at least considered. That’s why Google’s new Gmail layout, with the addition of Gmail Tabs, is causing such a stir within the marketing industry. It limits the opportunity for marketers to deliver their messages alongside other valued messages.
Even if a customer has signed up to get messages from their favorite brands, they are still getting funneled by Gmail Tabs into the new Promotions tab, unless the user moves them into their Primary tab. This new paradigm requires marketers to think and act differently.
Read this article on GigaOM.com
