• by Jess Nelson , February 2, 2017

As many as 10% of emails sent to tabbed Gmail accounts may be mislabeled and delivered into incorrect folders, according to a study released this week by Return Path.

The data and marketing solutions provider explored the accuracy and adoption of Gmail Categories, Google’s four-year-old solution to inbox overload. Gmail’s organization system uses five category labels to sort messages into designated folders, such as Promotions for email marketing offers and Forums for mailing lists and groups.

Google’s sorting algorithm may not be completely accurate, however, as 1 in 10 tabbed Gmail users assert that their emails are not labeled correctly. The data solutions provider polled 1,628 Gmail users in December via a Google Consumer Survey, and then analyzed 6 billion messages sent to Gmail users during a week in October using the company’s Inbox Monitor Tool.

Return Path’s study suggests that Gmail Categories may be affecting email placement and engagement rates for email messages.

Gmail is the most popular consumer email service, with more than 1 billion monthly active users, so at first Return Path’s inaccuracy statistics appears like a giant red warning flag for email marketers. Incorrect classification could lead to decreased engagement if subscribers are accustomed to looking for emails in a specific location. For example, viewership could decrease if a marketing email is delivered into a less-used folder, as opposed to the Promotions tab.

Yet only a third of Gmail users currently utilize the tabs feature to sort their email inboxes. Out of those who do, 9.2% say that Gmail does not sort their emails correctly.

The Gmail tabs most likely to be enabled are Social, for social media alerts and updates, and Promotions, for email marketing messages. 

Among the Gmail users who do use the Promotions tab, 19.9% never check it and simply use it as a method to filter out unwanted email promotions. 11.9% do check the promotions tab consistently, while 26.5% checking at least once a day. 

The inbox placement rate of the Promotions tab is 84.5%, while the read rate is 19.2% according to Return Path’s study.

Return Path advises email marketers to track tabs classification in addition to email deliverability, and has added a new Gmail Categories widget to its Inbox Monitor solution to help marketers measure Gmail placement. Leveraging data from Return Path’s Consumer Network of more than 2 million active inboxes, email marketers can track the categorization of their messages to Gmail subscribers to evaluate if their messages are being sorted correctly.