Recently Gmail made yet another change to their (your) inbox layout that could have a negative impact for your communications efforts In the quest to organize your inbox, Google may have made it easier for your emails to get lost and thus unread. Let’s take a look.
What’s going on?
Gmail has changed your inbox so that it funnels your incoming email into tabs instead of one inbox. They decide where it goes, not you. Take a look below to see what it looks like.Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
So what?
Well, if the people you send your emails to such as your community, donors, and members, are not aware of how Gmail filters their mail they may not be reading them. All your organization’s work, all the updates that they look forward to may not be reaching them! If your emails are filtered automatically to the Promotions tab, along with spam, your readers might not even see them because they might automatically think that everything in promotions tab is junk mail.
Now what?
There are a couple of things you can do about this.
First, if you want to change back to your old inbox it’s quite easy.
There are a few steps (see graphic on right).
- Click on your settings icon.Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
- Click Configure Inbox
- You’ll notice the tabs are checked off. Uncheck these so only your
primary inbox remained check. - Save
Now when you return to your inbox you’ll have one tab with all your emails.
With this set up one can scan one inbox for all their mail.
A second option would be to keep the new layout but have your advocacy
emails go to your primary inbox.
It’s easy to do. Just drag the emails you want in
your primary inbox from the Promotions tab into the Primary tab. When you do this you will get a pop-up message asking if you want to make this change permanent so that all future emails from this sender appear in this new tab. Choose yes if you do. Now that email will always appear in the new tab and you can use the Promotions tab for actual Promotions. Simple.
For more detailed information on how to customize your Gmail inbox please visit this link.
Do your readers (the Gmail users) know about these changes? Share this webpage with them to make sure they do.
