Google has a knack for creating products that make our personal lives easier, whether it be through super user-friendly applications or enhancing their current products with useful features. The latter just happened on Tuesday.
This week, Google unveiled a new “block” button for Gmail users. From our personal (and work) lives, this is a much-needed feature. If you’re receiving email after email from an annoying and disruptive salesperson (or company), a couple clicks of the mouse will alleviate this problem immediately.
Once you block a sender in your Gmail account, all of their proceeding messages will then go into your spam folder. You are then able to go in and change your privacy settings at any time in the future in case you would like to start receiving their messages in your inbox again.
But how does this affect your business and your email marketing efforts?
Let’s take a look at some numbers first. As of 2014, there have been an estimated 3.2 billion email accounts created. This is a number that increases on a daily basis, and I’m sure we will soon be approaching the 4 billion mark. Now we don’t know how large your email marketing list, but it’s safe to say that the potential to reach a large amount of people is there.
Now let’s look at one statistic that you should really be focused on.
60 percent.
A recent report from AYTM Market Research found that 60 percent of consumers use Gmail as their main email service. We all knew that Google’s mail service was popular, but to have that much of a market share is incredible.
Now, what his really means for you and your business is that six out of ten people can now easily block your email marketing efforts. With a simple click of a mouse, your emails could soon not even reach the inbox of your intended audience.
What You Can Do to Prevent People From Blocking Your Emails
While it is impossible to fully prevent people from blocking your emails, you can take steps to prevent it.
- Check what you’re sending. Your content directly determines whether your audience clicks through If you’re sending your email list relevant and useful content, there’s going to be a substantially lower chance of them blocking you because they don’t want to stop receiving that information!
- Giving them an option. Some people don’t like to be bombarded with emails, while others may want to hear from you every time you publish something new. So, you could send your list a quick email and have them let you know what their delivery preference is in terms of timing.
- Make sure you’re only sending emails to people that have actually requested it. Legally, you can’t send marketing emails to anyone that hasn’t opted-in to it. It’s also a good practice to make the unsubscribe process easy--some people may no longer wish to receive content from you. Instead of having them mark you as spam--which can have negative effects on YOU--make it easy for them to opt out. Because, in reality, you don’t really want (or need) to be emailing them anyway.
Email marketing is a very effective tool despite what some people think (you can read more about that here). If you have questions on how to create a more effective email campaign, or don’t know where to get started, give us a call at 419.629.0080 today to talk to one of our Digital Strategists now!
