The big news in the e-mail marketing community this week is the introduction of Google’s Gmail Priority Inbox. The service will allow the Gmail user to classify incoming mail in a way that is relevant to them.

Many e-mail marketers question what impact it will have on the industry. The answer can be summarized quite simply: the relevance of e-mails and the interaction with the recipients will have to be focused on more than ever.

I personally think it is very good news and for a good e-mail marketer it actually shouldn’t be a concern. An e-mail marketer MUST concentrate on the relevance of his/her emails for the recipient. Hopefully Google’s Gmail Priority inbox will be an extra ‘push’.

Although many people, me included, still predominantly use e-mail desktop clients like Outlook, most people have at least one web-based e-mail account.

Gmail and other web-based e-mail clients (such as Windows Live) are often used to subscribe to newsletters. For many people it’s a way not to use their “most personal” email address for downloading papers, subscribing to newsletters, etc.

E-mail is great unless there's too much of it

The YouTube movie by Google that introduces Gmail Priority Inbox clearly indicates where it will be positioned. The video starts with the sentence "Email is great…unless there’s too much of it.”

How does the system work? It is very simple: Gmail verifies with which e-mails people interact (opening them, reply etc.) and in this way “learns” which mails are more important than others for the specific recipient. Based on this Gmail will continuously arrange the incoming emails from important to less important.

Apart from the algorithm that steers the system, the user can also determine which messages are more important than others.

Or, in other words: people are in control of their inbox which is becoming more “intelligent”. A good initiative from Google, apart from possible privacy issues that could arise. It is also one that is very necessary. Before you could also manage your Gmail inbox to some extent, but after some time those – certainly if you use it for newsletter – it becomes one giant inbox of messages of which people probably check few regularly.

What should email marketers learn from this?

• That relevance, on the level of timing and content, is crucial
• That the recipient of e-mail now has even more control and therefore it’s even more important to focus on his needs
• That personalization, dynamic content and subject lines and interesting benefits customized to the subscriber are essential
• That an e-mail marketer, now more than ever should have the correct details about his clients and prospects in order to send the correct content at the correct time in function of behavior, needs, etc.

J-P De Clerck is a 360 degrees interactive marketing, content, conversion and social media consultant. You can connect with him on Twitter, his site or his personal blog.