Here are two factoids to alert you to some tweaks you should be making in preparation for your year-end fundraising activities.

• 74 percent of consumers/donors use Google search;
• 60 percent own GMAIL accounts.

So what?

In mid-to-late July Google introduced Gmail Tabs, a change to its Inbox designed to differentiate between what they call ‘Primary’ emails and ‘Promotions’. A good part of the email-marketing world has been in a dither scrambling for ways to keep their messages in front of Gmail subscribers.

Chances are that many of your donors who use Gmail and who are accustomed to receiving emails from you haven’t seen them for awhile because those messages have been shunted off and sequestered under the ‘Promotions’ Tab.

This is likely the case because even though your constituents signed up or opted in for your communications, by default your messages will most likely go to their Gmail ‘Promotions’ Tab.

Consensus among the experts is that between 5% and 25% of all email lists are affected. Nothing to sneeze at.

There are no hard numbers on how many Gmail users are using ‘Tabs’ for their inbox. And, of course Gmail users can read their messages in dozens of email clients like Outlook, Yahoo, and Apple Mail that don’t support Tabs.

In terms of how the switch has affected overall performance, the results of several studies are mixed. Silverpop, the digital marketing firm, reports that 13% of their clients have seen a decrease in open and click rates. The email research firm Return Path reports that ‘engaged subscribers’ will find your emails no matter where Gmail routes them, but you face a far bigger challenge where ‘slightly engaged’ or ‘unengaged’ subscribers are concerned.

I asked Steve MacLaughlin, Director of the Idea Lab at Blackbaud, what he’s seeing. “It’s not going to cause the collapse of Western civilization,” he assures us. “The good news in all of this is that there are things nonprofits can do to be in the Primary Tab.”

Here are Steve’s recommendations:

• Create an email targeted specifically at constituents with Gmail.com addresses.

• Your message should deliver a very simple two-step call to action, as follows …

• “Click on the Promotions Tab.”

• “Drag and drop the message to the Primary Tab and click ‘Yes’ for future messages from this address.”

Steve adds: “If nonprofits haven’t already done this, then it would behoove them to do so before the big end-of-year fundraising push.”

Any Agitators out there have Gmail experiences or advice to share?

Roger

P.S. Two resources for readers interested in more detail.

1) Download Silverpop’s free whitepaper, Gmail Tabs: Impact on Email Marketing and Strategies to Respond, for an insightful summary of what’s known (and not known) about Gmail Tabs … a 3 Stage Marketing Game Plan for Tabs … and a Checklist for Gmail Tabs Inbox Strategy.

2) For an understanding of Google’s business strategy behind Gmail Tabs read the inimitable Seth Godin’s take on this. In The Choke Point, he notes: “Sooner or later, all big public media companies go in search of a choke point, the place where they can find a leg up in terms of attention and monetization … [Gmail Tabs] provides Gmail with a choke point for the future, because the person who controls which tab an email arrives in is powerful indeed.”