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Google's new promotions tab in Gmail is siphoning some messages from online merchants, eBay and other online marketplaces away from the primary inbox. The change is the result of a Gmail Inbox redesign by Google which explained, "Gmail is getting a brand new inbox on desktop and mobile that puts you back in control using simple, easy organization."

Google announced on May 29th it would be gradually rolling out the changes to Gmail accountholders. When users first log into their account after the change, they see three tabs (which many people are referring to as folders): Primary, Social and Promotions. The only emails displayed are messages Google has deemed of a personal nature that it funnels into the default Primary tab. Users must click on the other tabs in order to see their other emails.

Google allows users to set up two additional tabs: Updates and Forums, and you can use all, some or none of the five tabs.

Online merchants and marketers are very concerned about the impact on their bottom line and have experienced decreased open rates, according to Jason Warnock, Vice President of Market Intelligence & Measurement at Yesmail Interactive, an email marketing platform. While it appears too early to tell exactly how much impact the new Gmail inbox may be having on retailers and ecommerce in general, companies like Yesmail have "war rooms" set up to monitor the change and develop best practices to make sure clients' emails are not going unseen by the intended recipients.

A Google spokesperson said transactional emails (our term) will go into users' Primary tab, and if the user has set up the Updates tab, those emails will go into Updates. By transactional emails, we mean notices from retailers including purchase confirmations and notices of shipment and delivery. But there's an important caveat for merchants: keep marketing messages out of those notifications, or they could end up in the Promotions folder. That's a "best practice" Google is sharing with online marketers, according to the spokesperson.

Every time you visit your Gmail account after the Inbox transformation has been rolled out, you automatically see messages that Google has deemed personal in your Primary tab. Messages from social networks, media-sharing sites, online dating services, gaming platforms, and other social websites appear in your Social tab, while it seems everything else goes into the Promotions tab - even newsletters that users have subscribed to, including EcommerceBytes newsletters, which are non-promotional.

Those who take the trouble to set up the Updates tab to receive "notifications such as confirmations, receipts, bills, and statements" receive those notices (and newsletters) in the Updates tab rather than the Promotions tab.

The good news? Yesmail's Warnock said transactional emails from merchants, such as purchase confirmations, are making their way to the user's Primary tab. Some commercial messages are also making their way into the Primary tab, and Yesmail has identified some common factors that they are now testing.

But wouldn't Google make changes once marketers figure out how to get their emails into the Primary tab? Warnock, who has been working on "email deliverability" for years, called it a cat and mouse game, but said it generally takes a longish time for ISPs to react to such changes.

Warnock said his company constantly monitors metrics like open rates and has seen a decrease of between .25 - 1.0 percent over the past month or so. He does week over week comparisons, and he said consumers are still actively engaging.

It's significant when there's a major change in a service like Gmail - Warnock said between 80 - 90% of North American recipients of email marketing newsletters are from one of the four major email services: AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail (now Outlook). And of those, Gmail accounts for betwen 25 - 40%.

It's not hard to understand why a company would want to solve the "inbox problem" - many of us find it impossible to keep up with the crush of emails we receive on a daily basis. The Google spokesperson said the company thinks the new design could actually benefit marketers because people will be in the right frame of mind when they click on the Promotions tab.

Users can choose to disable the tabs and revert to the old style inbox. Users who keep the tabs can click on a message from a company and drag it to the Primary tab - they will then see a message asking them under which tab they'd like to see such emails placed in the future.

An EcommerceBytes reader said she believed people could be missing out on important emails. "Even though advised of the tabs, I keep forgetting about them. And (I) leave them to last to thing to check them when I'm in a hurry."

Warnock said Yesmail is recommending that merchants conduct a "tabsition" campaign (a play on the words tabs and transition) by sending a message to their Gmail customers advising them to drag emails from the Promotions tab to the Primary tab to ensure they'll receive future communications - include an illustration, he advised. Even if that email ends up in the Promotions folder, he believes Gmail users are looking there, as it's still early days.

Google began rolling out the new design to Gmail users at the end of May, but increased the pace of the rollout in the last couple of weeks.

EcommerceBytes sent email inquiries to Amazon and eBay asking them if they'd seen an impact as a result of the Gmail redesign, and if they planned to message their users. Amazon said it would not comment, and eBay has not responded.

See Google's announcement about the new Gmail Inbox design and the Gmail help page.

And leave a comment on the EcommerceBytes Blog.

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About the author:

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.

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