If you have a Gmail account (and most of us do), you may have noticed a change recently. This change affects businesses and consumers alike. Take a few minutes to read through this blog and watch the videos so that you can get more out of your Gmail email account — whether for personal or business use.
Your Personal Gmail Settings
If you haven’t logged into your Gmail account recently, you may be surprised to discover that there are now tabs across the top of your Gmail inbox!
These were designed to make your inbox easier to navigate and to help you organize your email so that you can quickly and easily find the messages that are most important.
The problem is, Gmail may not correctly identify and categorize your incoming email. Luckily, it’s super easy to let Gmail know where you’d like your incoming email to go. You have two simple options:
1. Click, drag and drop emails into the tab where you want those emails to go, then click, “yes” when asked, “Do this for future messages from XYZ email address.”
2. Right-click on an email, select “Move to tab” and choose the tab where you’d like those messages to go. Then click, “yes” when asked, “Do this for future messages from XYZ email address.”
Done. So simple! Now please make sure to move your 123Print email to your Primary tab. ☺
You can also click the star icon to the left of an email in your Gmail inbox to have it filed in your “Starred” folder on the left sidebar. This is a handy feature for making it easy to find those emails you may want to go back to read. Our very own email marketing manager, Michelle (who was recently engaged!) tells us that all of her wedding emails get a star.
What the New Tabs Mean for Small Business Email Campaigns
If your small business sends out eNewsletters, announcements, invitations and special offers via email, the Gmail change is important to you, too. It’s possible that your promotional emails are going into the Promotions tab. Of course that makes sense, but it’s likely that the Promotions tab may be perceived as a form of “junk mail” by some, which means they may not check if often, or they might just empty all the emails without reading them — not even realizing that your email is in there!
To help ensure that your emails get delivered to the right place and read, we suggest that you consider sending an email that educates your customers. Send a short and sweet email that shows or tells them how to update their settings so that your emails are delivered to the right tab. Feel free to borrow from our explanation above if it’s helpful.
How Do I Get My Gmail Email to Go Back to the Way It Was?
Don’t like the tabs? That’s easy to fix, too. Simply click the gear icon in the upper right corner, select “Configure Inbox” and deselect all tabs but “Primary,” then click “Save”. Voila! (You can switch back to tabs any time.)
Hopefully you’ve found this helpful! Please let us know if there’s other marketing assistance you’re looking for by leaving a comment below.
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View Comments
Since joining G+ my gmail folder looks like a spam folder. Doing the shifting thing like you suggested doesn't work if you want to move mountains at a time. I have resorted to a new private gmail account.
Good article on the basics.
Hi, Ann.
Thanks. But you're right. Trying to move a bunch of email is a pain. So, when you say you have mountains to move, have you tried using the search feature at the top of your Gmail page?
From the search box, you can search for all your emails from a specific person, or all emails with a certain word in the subject line, and then you can select all (by clicking on the down arrow by the square icon on the far left, above your tabs). Next, click on Inbox in the left sidebar. Then click on the folder icon (5th icon to the right above the tabs) down arrow and choose where you want to move those emails.
I also found a link to Google support about transferring large groups of email: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/35088?hl=en
But I couldn’t find “create a filter,” so here’s how I went about doing that:
Go to your Gmail inbox.
On the same row where it says Gmail, the first option box to the right of “Gmail” that looks like an empty square, click the down arrow beside it and select all.
On the last option in that row, where it says “More” click the drop-down arrow, and click on “Filter Messages Like These,” or “Create Filter” if that’s an option. (If you have a lot of email in your inbox, you may get a pop up that says, “Only the first 25 conversations of your XXX conversations will be used in filter creation. Would you like to continue?” Click OK.)
A new pop-up will appear. Fill in the appropriate box with the appropriate information. Then click the blue text in the lower-right corner that says, “Create filter with this search”
Another pop-up will appear that lets you create rules for all new mail that comes through that filter. The last option on the pop-up is to “Categorize as:” and you can choose which tab you want it to go in from there.
Click “create filter” and all of those messages in your inbox, and future messages, should go to the appropriate category tab.
When I was done, I realized that my inbox was no longer showing the tabs at the top, so I had to click the gear icon in the upper right corner, select "Configure Inbox" and selected all tabs I wanted to show, including the tab for the new filter I had just created.
Hope this helps!
~ Rhonda