Access to Gmail categorization data through Return Path Platform and Inbox Monitor helps you determine if your emails are being categorized appropriately. Proper and intuitive categorization can lead to a better subscriber experience. This data also helps you understand the Gmail landscape and context so you can learn more about how subscribers may be interacting with your email.

Gmail’s use of categories helps users manage their inboxes and view email. The intent behind showing this type of data in Return Path Platform and Inbox Monitor is not meant to encourage any altering of Gmail’s categorization algorithm, but instead to help you determine if your campaigns are being treated properly to meet subscribers’ expectations.

Here are different ways you can use Gmail categorization data in Return Path Platform and Inbox Monitor:

Identify if your transactional email is being categorized as Updates instead of Promotional

• Subscribers typically expect booking emails, shipping confirmation, welcome messages, and event invites to be categorized as Updates. When transactional emails are categorized as Promotional, they can often be overlooked. This is because Promotional email is not how subscribers think of transactional email. Additionally, if subscribers have their tabs turned on they expect transactional email to be placed within the Updates tab.
  
  
• It is important to see how your welcome messages are being classified. They typically perform better if they are treated as Updates instead of Promotional. This is because welcome messages are a part of your first interactions with subscribers. And welcome messages include information that is meant to inform them that they will be receiving your emails. You can test different methods of changing your email sender address and content to encourage more of your welcome messages to be categorized as Updates.
  
  
• Subscribers expect that email announcing a discount would be categorized as Promotional unless subscribers have re-categorized prior email as Primary. If they do this and decide that your emails are important enough to be Primary, Gmail will learn to categorize your email as Primary for that subscriber.

Identify marketing emails that subscribers find particularly interesting

• If you notice that a campaign is being categorized more prevalently as Primary, then this campaign might be especially interesting to your subscribers. Gmail categorization in Return Path Platform and Inbox Monitor doesn’t show you what percent of your email campaign was actually moved from category to category, or subscribers’ historical preferences. However, seeing a high Primary category placement is directional information indicating that this campaign may be more interesting to subscribers than other campaigns that are highly categorized as Promotional. 

Understand categorization differences for your subscribers across the same campaign

• If you notice that a small percentage of your campaigns are spread across categories, then it may mean your subscribers expect your email to be classified differently from where it ends up in their inbox. This information can inform your testing around what categories of email to send.