Important Gmail update coming soon!

published on 16/04/2018,

updated on 17/08/2021

Last week, many sites leaked screenshots of a future major update of Gmail. If most of the features that will evolve will not directly affect marketers (yes, the Promotion tab would still be present, Google would be wrong not to offer it anymore), it is still interesting to look at it, Gmail is often a precursor in the world of webmail.

The stat : Gmail, it's 1.2 billion users in the world!

Source: https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/gmail-statistics/The most important evolution would be visibly on the side of the interface which would take the codes of the Material DesignA development that has already been present for some time in the Gmail mobile application.

On the other hand, some of the new products have been developed directly from the laboratory that is " Inbox by Gmail"Two of them are worth mentioning:

Snooze emails A feature that allows you to create an automatic reminder of the email (tomorrow, this weekend, next week, another day...)
Smart replies These are small contextual calls to action that are displayed below the emails and allow you to pre-fill a future response (already available in the Gmail mobile application)

Finally, Google should soon implement the possibility to consult Gmail "offline", but other screenshots released last week would also talk about an auto-destruct/confidentiality feature for emails (to see how they will manage the latter, it will probably not be compatible between messengers).

Inbox, stop or still?

Launched in 2014, "Inbox by Gmail" has become Google's laboratory for everything related to innovative features around email. Given the lack of "real" consumer adoption, one can really wonder if it's worth continuing to develop this tool alongside Gmail. Time will tell, but personally, it would be a shame to miss out!

Is there an impact on the marketing uses of email?

As far as interface changes are concerned, as mentioned above, the Promotions and Notifications boxes still seem to be in place, so we shouldn't expect any behavioral changes in this area... even though any change in ergonomics can lead to significant changes in usage. The most important change is undoubtedly the "Snooze" issue! For some time now, we've been seeing a tendency for email consumption times to get longer (even if this doesn't have a spectacular effect on campaign results). Here, it's the recipient who'll be able to say to himself "This looks like a great promotion for my next vacation, I'd like it to appear again this weekend so I can see it with my family". Well, don't get your hopes up too much on this one, we'll see in practice if it's really used for commercial emails.

As for the "Smart replies", for the moment, on Inbox and in the mobile app of Gmail, they do not appear under the emails of the promotions box (at least, we have not seen any), it would be interesting to "play" with them to see what are the language elements that allow to display them.

We will of course give you more news when the features will be present and when we will have been able to test them. Maybe we'll get some new info at the Google I/O conference from May 8th to 10th.

Sources:

https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/12/heres-what-the-new-gmail-looks-like/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/13/google-is-testing-self-destructing-emails-in-new-gmail/ https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/12/17227974/google-gmail-design-features-update-2018-redesign

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The author

Jonathan Loriaux

I've been involved in email marketing for over ten years, and my career path began on the technical side (email campaign integration) before moving on to sales (as an eCRM expert) and finally marketing consultancy. For the past 9 years, I've been the author of the Badsender.com blog. Emailing isn't just an expertise, it's truly become my passion, which is why Badsender is now my main activity, with the creation of an emailing consulting business linked to the site.

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