Is the New Gmail Killing E-mail Marketing?

For Gmail users overwhelmed by inbox clutter, the great Gmail redesign of 2013 may have been just the thing, hiding promotional e-mails and social network updates behind tabs. The companies sending those promotional e-mails, on the other hand, are less than thrilled with the change.

Afraid the “promotions” tab is functionally a black hole, a number of companies from Gilt Groupe to Groupon (GRPN) have been encouraging e-mail contacts to route their messages back into their personal inbox—an easy step accomplished by simply dragging an e-mail from the “promotions” tab and dropping it in the “primary” tab. Other companies are more passively anxious. “We’re definitely hearing about it from our members,” says Artemis Berry, a vice president at Shop.org, the digital arm of the National Retail Federation.

The change may not be as bad as they fear. Yesmail, a marketing company that delivers about 40 billion e-mails a year for companies such as EBay (EBAY) and Hewlett-Packard (HP), says the share of marketing e-mails that were opened—a metric that traditionally ranges from 0 to about 25 percent—has dropped by less than 1 percent.

Read more at: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-19/is-the-new-gmail-killing-e-mail-marketing#r=hp-ls