If you are a Gmail user you must know by now that your emails have been automatically 
sorted out into a tabbed inbox: Primary, Social and Promotions and whatever you want to add. I personally find it great as I get a ton of emails daily making it difficult to fix my attention to the things that really need to get done.
On the promotions tab you probably have noticed a couple of disguised emails which shows that it pretty obvious that making Gmail user friendly wasn’t Google’s only intention. In any case this label may not be at all a bad idea because the user is expected to find exactly what sometimes he has requested: commercial communication of products or services he has an interest in.
However, as email marketing professionals the fear with the promotions folder is that the users’ tendency is to most likely ignore or at least put off reading emails under this label.
To bring some light to our concerns, Mailchimp has recently published research on how the new Gmail inbox is affecting open rates and their conclusion was that in fact this change is bringing down open rates, but so far it is not significant.
Only time will tell if this trend will continue, on the meantime we need to keep boosting our creativity and providing relevant contents if we want to stand out to our customers.
