Awhile back I talked about Gmail’s update having an impact on email marketing. I decided to look at how the update effected my open rates for Gmail before and after they implemented this. Apparently, the Gmail inbox update was released on May 29th, 2013, so I gathered the data from my email software from an newsletter before then. I also gathered data to see how it compares to the other popular email provider: Yahoo.
Here is the video which shows the update:
These are the results for one of my smaller email lists before the Gmail update:
Yahoo
opened: 104
Unopened: 352
total: 456
22.8% open
Gmail
opened: 114
Unopened: 341
total: 455
25% open
And here are the results with the same list after Gmail implemented the email update. The list is relatively the same size.
Yahoo
opened: 118
Unopened: 358
total: 476
24.8% open
Gmail
opened: 115
Unopened: 342
total: 457
25.2% open
To my surprise, the open rates actually didn’t go down at all. Of course there are a lot of variables that effect this such as time of day it was released, subject line, etc. But other email campaigns that I have been releasing during the post-Gmail update are having similar results.
My conclusion on this: if your users are enjoying the newsletter and it mixes in a lot of helpful advice with offers, they will still look for your emails. I have also been implementing some techniques described in the previous post, so I will see how that improves the results.
How are your open rates looking for Gmail after the update?
I’d like to hear from others about how this effected your open rates for Gmail email addresses in particular. Please let me know if the comments.
