Imagine your important email getting lost and unanswered in thousands of promotional emails or social media updates. After all, business and personal emails are more important than any other information that you receive on email. When emails started growing in numbers, Gmail realised to unclutter your Inbox. That’s how Gmail Tabs came into existence.

Now, what are these Gmail Tabs anyway?

Google introduced five tabs in Gmail, which aligns with most of the email categories. Now, how does Gmail transfer your messages into this tab when you haven’t configured it yet? Well! Gmail categorizes the emails based on complex algorithms that consider massive data like user engagement, the header of the mail, subject of the mail, content, sender’s name, IP address and many such parameters. A caution to email marketers, unfortunately, the sender doesn’t have control over the placement of its emails.

Gmail’s Five Tabs and their purpose

• Primary Tab: The primary tab is the most important tab in Gmail. It comprises of emails related to ‘person to person’ conversations or any other emails from the users’ contact list, which is not intended to fit into any other tabs.

• Promotions: For all you shopaholics out there! This tab might interest you as it comprises of emails with respect to coupons, offers, and other email marketing messages.

• Social: As the name suggests, the social tabs are where the user receives emails from its social networking platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tinder, etc.

• Updates: This tab comprises of emails related to transactional details such as invoices, shipping notifications, bills, receipts, order confirmation, membership details etc.

• Forums: Forum tab includes all your discussion forum, groups, mailing list notifications, etc.

Now that you are well aware of these tabs, let me tell you the benefits. First they help in improved deliverability and reducing spam complaints. Since the emails are categorized it becomes easier for users to go to each individual tabs at their convenience. Additionally, you can also move your email from the promotions tab to primary, after which future emails will also be delivered to the primary tab.

All in all, understanding how Gmail tabs work can contribute to your email marketing strategy effectively!