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Back in July 2013, Google announced several changes to Gmail, its high-capacity email service that broke the old paradigm of minuscule storage space and made it free for users.

Back when Google launched Gmail, people eagerly snapped up beta invites and dropped their old mailboxes for Gmail's gigabyte and growing product. Since that time, Gmail gained 425 million users as of June 2012 and likely more since then.

Gmail's voluminous inbox made it easy for people to sign up for as many marketing deals, newsletters, and updates as they wished. No more rigorous management of storage space was needed because Gmail keeps growing.

That worked well for everyone doing email marketing, which persists in being very effective. Monetate's Ecommerce Quarterly Q1 2013 provided several statistics on email's marketing power:

-Email programs are responsible for generating twice as much direct traffic as social media, and fully four times the conversion rate.

-Email had the highest add-to-cart rate by referrer of any source, with a 10.51% add-to-cart rate; far ahead of Search (6.81%) and Social (3.24%)

-Email was highest in average page views by referrer (Email 9.02; Search 9.02; Social 4.60)

-Email was highest in conversion rates: Email 3.19%, Search 1.95%, Social .71%

-Email had the second highest conversion rate (3.19%) of any channel in this EQ report, behind only AOL Search

However, the changes wrought by Google brought an update to the familiar one-size-fits-all inbox, in the form of organizational tabs. By default, Gmail users seeing the new version of the inbox see three tabs: Primary, Social, and Promotions. Two extra tabs called Updates and Forums may also be activated by the user.

The problem for online merchants and email marketers comes from Google's decade-plus of refining and tweaking its vaunted search algorithms. The engine behind Gmail's inbox sorting effectively moved email marketing to the Promotions tab en masse.

Brad van der Woerd, Director Market Intelligence & Deliverability at Yesmail, told EcommerceBytes that his firm has only seen a slight decline in email open rates by Gmail users so far, only a 0.5 percent to 1 percent difference. He believes firms will probably have to wait a couple of months to better understand how Gmail's changes will ultimately affect them.

During that time, van der Woerd suggested email marketers should start crafting messages encouraging recipients to move emails arriving under the Promotions tab to the Primary tab in Gmail. The Primary tab is the default view for Gmail now.

Moving an email from one tab to another prompts a message from Gmail to the user, asking if future emails from that sender should also go to the Primary tab. Naturally email marketers will hope for the user to opt to do so.

Van der Woerd noted how some companies have already begun doing this. So far, this writer has seen such messages from electronics retailer Newegg and movie ticket seller Fandango. Newegg's email offered an apology that promo codes may have been missed because of their email hitting the Promotions tab, while Fandango included their "please move our email" message within an announcement for a contest to win a Ford Shelby GT500 Super Snake.

Online merchants shouldn't ignore other avenues for getting the message out about how to move messages from the Promotions tab to Primary. Van der Woerd suggested taking advantage of Facebook, Twitter, and any social media platforms to spread the message.

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About the author:

David A. Utter is a freelance writer based in Lexington, KY. He has covered technology topics from search to security to online business and has been quoted in places like ZDNet and BusinessWeek. He considers his appearance on NPR's "All Things Considered" with long-time host Robert Siegel a delightful highlight. Send your tips to media@davidautter.com and find him on Twitter @davidautter and on LinkedIn.

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