How Does Gmail Affect Your Mailings?

Inbox Ideas | Email Marketing Tips by AWeber

Posted by Justin Premick

Well, they’re not writing messages for you.

But they’ve taken a step that may make you change how you test your messages before sending.

With Gmail’s new Mail Fetcher feature, users can send and receive mail from any POP-enabled email account from within Gmail.

Gmail is already recognized as a highly used email domain. However, with this move, you can argue that Google isn’t trying to compete with Yahoo and Hotmail, but wants people to use Gmail as a web-based alternative to Outlook.

So What?

Where do you test your messages before sending?

Most people I talk to test in a software-based client (Outlook) and in Yahoo or Hotmail. Gmail is sometimes an afterthought because gmail.com addresses are still a relatively small part of most senders’ lists.

The thing is, now people with email addresses at major ISPs like Comcast can read your messages through Gmail’s interface. So, a lack of gmail.com addresses on your list doesn’t mean that nobody’s reading your newsletter in Gmail.

(Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to scream “panic!” Unless you’re mailing to a particularly tech-savvy niche, this isn’t an immediate issue. But as Gmail continues to grow, more of your subscribers may be using Gmail to read your messages.)

If you haven’t gotten yourself a Gmail account yet, get one, and start testing your messages in it.

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Resources:
Gmail adds POP3 accounts (via no man is an iland)
Mail Fetcher
Gmail
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20 Responses

David
December 19th, 2006 at 12:11 pm

Excellent advice!

We test our email in aol, hotmail, yahoo, outlook and gmail.

It’s amazing how different a message look in various email clients.
David G
December 19th, 2006 at 5:11 pm

Justin, thanks for the tip - is there any particular nasties in Gmail that we should be aware of?

Or like most mail clients just has its own set of traits?
Justin Premick
December 19th, 2006 at 5:23 pm

Dave,

Gmail disables images by default for all senders (but image blocking is pretty much the norm for major ISPs). Users have links to enable images for a specific message or for all future messages from a sender.

The notable display issue with Gmail is that their CSS support is minimal. If you’re creating HTML messages that use a lot of CSS, do so in such a way that the CSS-free HTML still looks good, because as of right now, Gmail simply ignores the overwhelming majority of CSS. Hopefully the team over at Google update Gmail to support CSS.

And, of course, test test test before sending
Nicole
December 19th, 2006 at 6:39 pm

This is a very good point… and something that we have been dealing with lately for our newsletter. We send out a monthly HTML newsletter that looks perfect on AOL, Yahoo, Outlook, and Hotmail, and no matter what we do, the images will not come out correctly in Gmail.

In Gmail, the top half of our newsletter comes out as it should, and the bottom half is all shifted to the left and will not allign with the top. Any suggestions on how to correct this for Gmail readers?
Jim Cockrum
December 20th, 2006 at 12:57 am

My text newsletters show up just fine in Gmail…

:0)

I actually did a poll of my readers and they really prefer text. Even gmail can’t screw with my text newsletter. Of course I put a link to the "pretty" online version of the newsletter in each text newsletter mailing.

Over 100,000 subscribers and not one of them has ever asked for an HTML version of my newsletter. I know my conversion rates might suffer a bit, but in my opinion text with a link to a pretty webpage is the way to go.

Jim
Justin Premick
December 20th, 2006 at 8:57 am

Nicole,

The best suggestion I have for you is to work with a designer (preferably one who is familiar with designing HTML for email) to test different changes so your messages render in Gmail more like they do in other email clients.
Howard Young
December 21st, 2006 at 11:57 pm

I’ve only tested by sending to my gmail account and never thought about testing to other accounts. I basically wanted to see if the message would pass through their spam filters and how it looked when sent from Aweber.
Rebecca Beasley
December 22nd, 2006 at 3:26 am

I also prefer text for e-mail newsletters.
So far my text doesn’t break where it’s not
supposed to, and the lines are relatively
equal in width with gmail.

I rarely if ever turn images on. If I want
my readers to see a site, I just put a link
in my newsletter. I don’t see much need to
have an extra html newsletter if it’s not
going to be read.

Rebecca Beasley
Jim Cockrum
December 22nd, 2006 at 8:54 am

Rebecca said: [[I don’t see much need to have an extra html newsletter if it’s not going to be read.]]

I don’t mail the HTML newsletter- I post it online.

I send two mailings with every newsletter. First the text only news and then 24-36 hours later a very short text email that says " The online version is ready". I include an HTML link to the online vs. I’ve found that when I send a simple second short message saying "The Online Version of the text email is now online" and include a link that I get about 30% of my response rate from the online newsletter.

There could be a few factors at work that cause this to happen, but it consistently is about 30%. I suggest you try it as an experiment. I’ve been doing it for years because it works quite well for me.

The shorter message seems to clear the keyword spam filters very well…I think that’s one of the bigger factors (my theory).

Jim
http://www.JimCockrum.com
Rebecca Beasley
December 22nd, 2006 at 8:19 pm

My point was that since text seems to work better
for me, I don’t post a link to an html version.
I could do an html version if I wanted, but I don’t
because the format for text works very well with my
readers. I mainly try to leave out known spam filter
words and try to keep it short and to the point, plus
keeping the width around 65 characters helps. I may try
formatting in html and see what happens. But for my own
personal preference and that of my readers it seems to
be that text works better.
So why fix it if it ain’t broke?
Ty Cohen
December 25th, 2006 at 11:19 am

Jim do you think that having both the text version of your newsletter as well as the online html version is whats causing the 30% inccrease or could it be the fact that your subscribers are receiving TWO emails from you?

I say this because I see that the more often I email my list the same message the more responsive they are.

Ty Cohen
James Salmons
December 26th, 2006 at 12:24 am

Thanks for all the good info. As a new site and newsletter publisher I was glad to be tipped off to this issue. Fortunately I think I have worked out an effective solution, at least for me.

After learning how all these services mess up css I searched and found that a number of programs and sites offer help in the way of instructions and templates. I chose to get High Impact Email and used a template which I personalized to the extent it doesn’t even resemble the original. The underlying structure is still there, however. Primarily it uses tables (so much for standards) extensively.

I have tested my first newsletter, to be distributed next month, and have found that it works great (images and all) in every test including g-mail.
Rob Toth
December 26th, 2006 at 9:37 pm

I’ve used Gmail for over a year now. I have been using a domain forwarding email and though I used to check it in Outlook, I’ve had it forwarding to Gmail for nearly as long as my account has been live.

I test my mailings in Hotmail, Gmail and Outlook but I read my subscriptions and all my incoming email in Gmail.

Gmail’s spam filter is fantastic. Hotmail can be tricky as it’s more frequent to find valid emails in Junk and vice versa. My ISP’s email filter system is similar.

Gmail combined with Gmail notifier and now the Thread Update (and then add on the built in Google Talk) makes it a very high efficiency tool.

In short… I think their user base will grow more and more especially in the business community as Gmail offers a lot of bells and whisltes (easy access to their online spreadsheets, over 2 GB storage space, etc).

The more of my subscribers that use Gmail, the happier I will be… especially if they’re coming from AOL!
Scott Shubert
December 30th, 2006 at 3:41 pm

This is interesting news to me. In order to build a list of opt-in subscribers I created a visually appealing set of lessons with graphics and video in html format in the e-mail this creates more of a sense of value than a text only e-mail. If this causes G-mail to filter the e-mail mayabe I should just send an e-mail with text saying, "here is the link to the next lesson."

What do you think?
What is Gmail?
January 1st, 2007 at 5:00 pm

I’ve actually stopped sending out the newsletters in HTML, and I’ve found a huge response. While my advertiser was getting about 7% CT in the HTML newsletter, the plain text newsletter has about 12% typing the addresses into the address bar. Amazing, as it’s actually more work for the reader.

In any case, not using CSS or XHTML (that means tables, folks!) in HTML newsletters helps them display properly across mail clients. And include all your images, as most mail clients block automatic image download.
Rebecca Beasley
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:29 am

I always include a hyperlink for response
that has the subject line so my readers can
reply and not have to type anything.
Then I filter the subject line to go to a new
folder.

For instance, if I want to have them respond
to a specific question, such as "How am I doing?"
I put a link like this one in the letter.
mailto:myemail@mydomain.com?subject=satisfied
or mailto:myemail@mydomain.com?subject=unhappy
Most people want to be able to contact me directly
and even if they send me ads, I don’t care. This
gives me a chance to visit their site and make
comments, thus increasing my ability to gain trust.

Even bouncebacks can be a goldmine if you know how
to use them.

Rebecca Beasley
Pete
January 13th, 2007 at 4:55 am

Being a subscriber of Jim Cockrum’s for a good while now, I always wait for the link to the live web page version. It’s just so much easier.
I adopted the same tactic myself recently and I’m very pleased with the results.

It seems all the major players are also using this delivery system now as well.

Though I do have to say, that it appears if you put MORE than one live link in the ‘linking’ E-mail it sends the SPAM filters into high alert because of the small amount of TEXT content.

It might pay to include an innocent article below if you need MORE than one link.

Pete
Dawud Miracle
January 16th, 2007 at 7:15 am

I hadn’t really thought about this. I’m going to get my GMail account today so I can begin testing. As always, Justin, thanks for the great topic.
liya
February 8th, 2008 at 2:17 am

I created a html version newsletter, it works just fine in Novell GroupWise, Thunderbird, Mac’s buid-in email but not work in Gmail, Outlook neither Webmail.

The CSS layout completely not working in Gmail, Outlook neither Webmail. it is just a pile of images and text put on top of each other. In addition, all the images used in the newsletter are stored as attachment with the email, pretty mess!

Can someone point me to the right direction?
Javier
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:24 am

We are having a similar problem with our Newsletter… It works fine in Outlook, but not in Gmail where it gets quite messed up… especially the links are not working and the font format are all wrong.

I hope somebody can give a hand. Thank you.