When a business sends an email, Google scans the incoming mail, and depending on the kind of information received, assigns the email to the Primary Inbox, the Social Tab, or the Promotions Tab.

The idea is to ensure that the Primary Inbox remains uncluttered, making it easier for users to find the emails that matter to them the most.

There are things you can do to improve the chances of your email arriving somewhere other than the Promotions tab. One way how to get emails out of promotions is to avoid practices that make your messages look like a promotion.

Improve your domain/sender reputation

Your email deliverability depends upon the reputation of your email domain. If you are using a brand new domain with no reputation, you will have to build your reputation slowly over time.

Avoid lots of images in your email

Anything with more than one image looks like a promotion. Stick to emails that look like plain text, as if you sent them from an email software platform. Definitely avoid an image header and stick to a common, even ordinary email signature.

More than one or two links in your email

One link per email. (Not including an Unsubscribe link.) The opinion is divided on whether repeating the same link more than once impacts your inbox placement. Tests prove both, so test your own emails to see what the result is.

If it’s “from” your brand, rather than you

Always make the email from you, not your brand. And, let your personality stand out. People buy from people, not machines. Be sure your audience knows your story and what you stand for.

Add a DMARC record to your DNS management panel

We recommend adding a DMARC record to your DNS management panel. The primary goals of DMARC are to combat email phishing and increase email authentication and delivery reliability.

Lots of fancy HTML code in your email

Clever email templates look great and businesses love them, but fancy HTML-coded templates often end up languishing in Promotions.

Links to your social media profiles in your signature (or any other links for that matter)

As mentioned, too many links will land you in Promotions, but, more importantly, you’ve worked hard to get someone to open and read your mail. Why send them to Facebook or Instagram when you want them to follow the call-to-action in your email?

Ask your audience to whitelist you

Once your email recipients have told Gmail that your emails are important to them, they will keep sending things into that inbox. So whitelist, open, click and reply to your heart’s content.

By applying the straightforward principles, you’ll be able to get your email into the Gmail primary inbox so as many people as possible will see it and open it. This will boost your audience engagement resulting in better webinar attendance and more sales. Remember that as many as half of your audience is likely to be using some kind of email infrastructure provided by Google.