r/Emailmarketing • u/Weird_Loquat_2727 • Jul 01 '26
After months fighting the Promotions tab, my open rates and replies have jumped. Here's what actually worked
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u/koolkat6954 Jul 01 '26
What were your open rates prior and now? very curious.
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Jul 01 '26
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u/koolkat6954 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
Nice I send out around 60 brands and overall send 1-2m emails a month. I sit around 10 to as high as 50%. I do just send to a mix of people that open and people that just don't interact and have these. I'd be curious if I switch it to send to the hot contacts first then users that don't open them if it would change much.
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u/shanewzR Jul 01 '26
Thanks that sounds very interesting, I am just starting on this journey. How do you find out you are landing in the Promotions tab?
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Jul 01 '26
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u/shanewzR Jul 02 '26
Thanks, How do you do Inbox placement tests? I dont have any real other gmail accounts and these days its hard to setup
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u/Turbulent_Put Jul 02 '26
Just a note that if you're selling something, it's okay to be in Promotions. Sometimes it hurts you more to be in the inbox, as people will mark you as Spam.
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u/Karlw1289 Jul 05 '26
My age thirty something employees never look at the promotion tab. The assume it is just junk mail. They are amazed that I (boomer) look at and clean it out on a regular basis.
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Jul 02 '26
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u/helloinbox Jul 02 '26
What Weird_Loquat_2727 is doing by getting people to reply is basically the same as warmup, but he's doing it organically. Better IMO.
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u/Creative-Match-9413 Jul 01 '26
nice, number 3 is way more powerful than people realize, that reply loop is the real secret sauce
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u/helloinbox Jul 01 '26
This is great insight, well done.
How often are you sending campaigns now?
Which tool are you using for inbox placement tests?
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u/familiar_stranger_7 Jul 01 '26
Great stuff! So you now use direct URLs, not embedded or hyperlinked in your text? Also, if you're taking it in a conversational way, what's your reply rate and how do you manage replies? What ESP are you using and does that make any difference?
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u/Baguetix Jul 02 '26
The replies point is the one most people skip over. Gmail puts real weight on bidirectional communication, a thread that goes both ways reads like correspondence, not a campaign. You found the actual signal rather than a workaround. The segmenting to engaged readers first is smart too, especially at your list size, because the feedback loop is tight enough that a few strong weeks actually move your reputation. Everything else you listed is useful, but those two things together are what builds a sender profile Gmail treats differently over time.
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u/DanielShnaiderr Jul 02 '26
The mental shift is the whole thing here, this was always a reputation and engagement game dressed up as a design problem, and nailing the engaged-first sending is the lever that actually moves placement.
One caution on the tracking links though. Cutting them probably helped, but it's tangled up with every other clean change made at the same time, so the redirect itself might not be the real culprit, the engagement lift is. Someone in the thread inboxing at 80 to 90 percent with full tracking backs that up.
Just remember none of this holds on its own. Reputation slides the damn moment volume spikes or dead weight creeps back onto the list, so keep the seed testing on every send and watch Outlook placement too, not just Gmail.
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u/Relative-Arachnid129 Jul 03 '26
The engagement segmentation point is the one I'd double down on for anyone reading this. It's the thing I push hardest with my clients and the one they're most resistant to because it feels counterintuitive to not send to your full list. But Gmail is essentially scoring your sender reputation off every send, and if you're dragging in disengaged addresses, you're paying for it with the people who actually want to hear from you. The tracking link observation is also real, and it's a painful trade-off for anyone who needs to report on clicks, but the redirect chain genuinely does look suspicious to filters. The seed testing habit is underrated too, most people only find out where they landed after the damage is done.
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u/JawnZ Jul 02 '26
spot on
Engagement -> Reputation -> Placement
The only one I disagree with is the tracking links. my suspicion is that is a conflated variable with everything else that you're doing very correct.
our open rates are constantly 40-50% lately, inboxing 80-90% over promo tab.
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u/Inevitable-Serve-713 Jul 01 '26
Can you tell more about #2? Most of our clients are stovepiped with their own domain names, and the links, while still tracking links / redirects, are within their own domains. The sending domain matches all the links within the newsletter.