If a good number of your subscribers are on Gmail, the latest Gmail update may have rattled you a bit. Yes, we’re talking about the new Gmail inbox, which has five tabs including primary, social, promotions, updates, and forums. Google’s Itamar Gilad blogged about this, saying:

“We get a lot of different types of email: messages from friends, social notifications, deals and offers, confirmations and receipts, and more. All of these emails can compete for our attention and make it harder to focus on the things we need to get done. Sometimes it feels like our inboxes are controlling us, rather than the other way around.”

Also Read: 7 Tips To Get Desired Results From Your Email Marketing Campaign

Google’s aim behind this update is clear: it wants happy users, users who have complete control over their inbox.

Now this may be good for Gmail users, it seems rather problematic for marketers at the first glance: subscribers now have to specially go to the promotions tab – which also has ads that look like emails – to see a newsletter. Yep, they will no more get your newsletter in their primary inbox. This means they may (at least at times) ignore it completely, thinking that it’s of no value.

MailChimp did research on this update and found that it’s sure slowing down open rates, not that significantly though. Of course, it’s way too early to take their word for it.

Today, we share some tips to make sure that your email marketing works even if this update proves to have a rather big impact eventually on email marketing as a tactic:

1. It’s ever more important to provide value to your subscribers. If they don’t like what you share, they are most likely to unsubscribe (forget about getting your emails moved to the main inbox).
2. It not just about selling. It’s also about building stronger relationships. So make sure that your emails are engaging and that your subscribers want to hit the reply to most (if not all) of your emails.
3. You can rather use the promotions tab to your advantage. Surprised? Let us explain. Imagine your subscriber lands on the promotion tab. He scans through it. If he doesn’t find anything worthwhile, he may zero in on what may sound out the scariest thing ever to you: mass deletion. So the subject of your email has become pivotal to getting more open and more attention.
4. It’s unfortunate but may happen: other email providers may follow in the footsteps of Gmail. It may be a good idea for you to guide your subscribers as to how they can move your email to their primary box. Make a video or an infographic or probably a simple instructive email would do. And if other emails actually follow the suit, repeat the same process.
5. Send an email if and only if you have something that’s actually share-worthy. Thoughtful. Interesting.

Also Read: 10 Ways To Improve Email Marketing In 2017

Hope this helps you do better email marketing.