Promotions Tab vs. Primary Tab: What Email Marketers Need to Know
If you’ve worked in email longer than five minutes, you’ve heard some version of this:
“We make more money when we land in Primary.”
And if you’ve worked in email longer than five months, you’ve also seen the aftermath: a short‑term bump in Primary tab placement, followed by rising complaints, unsubscribes, and head‑scratching about “sudden” deliverability issues.
Meanwhile, vendors continue to parade around, promising ‘Primary placement’ like they control Gmail’s filing cabinets. (They don’t, and they never will.)
So, let’s get a few things straight, right out of the gate:
Promotions = Inbox. It’s not the spam folder. It’s not a junk drawer.
Promotional mail belongs in Promotions. That’s where people go when they’re in a buying mindset. Trying to sneak your advertisements in between mail from friends and family as if people want them there is misguided (and a little bit delusional) at best; intentionally misleading or self-centered at worst.
Chasing Primary for marketing mail is a losing, never‑ending game. Filters evolve in real time; engagement is the only thing that compounds.
In this lesson, we’re gettin’ into why “Primary or bust” is short-sighted, misleading, and bad for your brand.
Why Promotions Is Often the Better Business Outcome
💌 Intention > Attention
People check Promotions when they’re in the mood to browse and buy — not when they’re racing to inbox zero between work emails and family threads. That’s why conversions often look stronger from Promotions, even when open rates don’t.
An open in Primary might just mean they’re clearing clutter. If that email of yours isn’t super relevant to their mission, it’s highly likely it will trigger an unsubscribe or a spam complaint.
An open in Promotions, on the other hand, is usually intentional… higher-quality, higher-intent.
💌 Tabs Aren’t Universal (or Even Consistent)
A big chunk of mail gets read in clients that don’t even show tabs (like the iPhone’s native app). For those readers, your Promotions email just… lands in the inbox. Voila!
Even among Gmail users (where tabs are enabled by default for new users within their desktop client and if they’re using the Gmail app on their smartphone), tabs aren’t everywhere: only a minority keep them enabled, and behaviors vary widely by age and preference.
For example, older cohorts often ignore tabs entirely but still drive strong metrics in the real-world. Others live in Promotions. The bottom line? Tabs are one slice of the pizza pie, not the whole thing.
It’s a great reminder that email marketing should never happen in a vacuum. It’s one of many ways someone might interact with your brand and drive revenue.
💌 It’s Not About Fancy Features
Yes, the Promotions tab comes with bells and whistles like Gmail Annotations and AMP. But most senders don’t need them — they’re heavy lifts, niche, and unpredictable thanks to AI constantly reshuffling what gets surfaced. What really works is clarity, timing, and making your emails worth opening.
Why “Nobody Checks Promotions” is The Myth That Won’t Die
When someone says, “Nobody checks their Promotions tab,” what they usually mean is “I personally don’t” or “I don’t want to believe my customers do.”
But it’s just not true! Let’s talk about why it’s not a problem worth bending your entire program’s back over.
💌 Because they do check it — and they can always find you.
A Mailgun survey (via Oracle) found that nearly 80% of Gmail users with tabs enabled check the Promotions tab at least weekly, and just over half check it daily. That’s millions of eyeballs in buying mode every single day. Hardly the “black hole” some make it out to be.
And even people who claim they “never” check are the same ones who do when they need a deal. They just don’t think of it as “checking Promotions” — they think of it as “looking up that thing I wanted to buy.”
Promotions is fully searchable.
Need a coupon code or when that special-edition sale’s gonna drop?
Tweets vanish in hours; promotional emails are right there months later.
💌 Because they might not be “email people” at all.
If someone truly never looks at Promotions or searches their inbox for offers, they’re not an engaged subscriber. And they’re not who you should be designing your program around.
Meet them on their preferred channel — SMS, app push, retargeting, whatever works — and keep your email list full of people who actually engage. Those are your people.
💌 Because chasing ghosts costs more than it returns.
The “never checkers” are a tiny minority. To reach them, you’d have to chase hacks that try to drag all your mail into Primary, disrupting the experience for everyone else (the ones who actually want your mail).
The result? More complaints, unsubscribes, and long-term deliverability risk. It’s smarter (and more profitable) to optimize for the people already engaging in Promotions, instead of breaking your program to chase a sliver of uninterested users.
💌 Because Promotions is where they expect to find you.
Tabs exist to give consumers more control over their inbox. And for real people (you know, the ones outside our little email bubble), promos belong in Promotions. Respecting that choice builds trust. Ignoring it erodes trust (and risks complaints) even from the people who do buy from you.
“But We Make More in Primary”: What’s Really Happening…
We’ve all heard the stories: “Our promo landed in Primary, and revenue jumped!”
At first glance, it feels like a win. But dig deeper, and those bumps usually come from things that have nothing to do with tabs:
Selection bias. A unicorn campaign, a perfect offer, or seasonal timing.You’re comparing different messages, not just different placement.
Short windows. One or two sends is not evidence. Filters (and audiences) adapt quickly.
Incomplete metrics. People celebrate clicks and conversions while ignoring complaints, unsubscribes, blocklistings, and declining future inboxing.
User preference violation. Bypassing tabs is like turning off someone’s do-not-disturb. Sure, they can buy — but they may also punish you for the intrusion.
The result: a short-term spike today, maybe even next week. But what happens next month, or next year? Long-term revenue doesn’t come from forcing attention. (Trust me, I have six-year-old twins.)
And when someone insists, “But the numbers prove Primary works,” it’s worth looking at what the data really shows. Chad S. White, head of research at Oracle Digital Experience Agency, found that Primary placement can boost opens by about 30% — but with no meaningful lift in clicks or conversions. In other words: curiosity may spike, but intent doesn’t.
The takeaway: sustainable revenue comes from being easy to find when people want you, not from hijacking their attention.
Vendor Pitch Dissection (No Names Needed)
A lot of those “Primary = more revenue” myths start with vendor pitches. They swoop in with polished pitches:
“More eyeballs, more clicks, more $$—land in the Primary tab where you belong.”
They’ll back it with shiny A/B screenshots and case studies promising +129% clicks here, +79% conversions there. It’s clean, persuasive… but it’s only half the story.
And here’s the kicker: Gmail itself has been steadily routing more mail into Promotions, even from senders who used to see regular Primary placement. Netcore reports a significant algorithm shift that pushes messages into Promotions regardless of sender reputation or content.
So the marketers who bet on “staying in Primary” are already losing visibility — while vendors keep selling a tactic that’s slipping away.
What’s missing from pitches like this:
❌ Longitudinal evidence. Where are the 30/60/90-day complaint trends and reputation curves?
❌ Causality controls. Was the lift due to placement, or just a better sale/offer/timing?
❌ User expectation. Tabs are a user choice. Override that too many times and you’ll pay in trust, complaints, and eventually, inbox placement.
❌ Sustainability. Gmail’s filters change in real time. Today’s “tactic” dies in weeks (if not hours).
❌ A view into the full funnel. If the only numbers shown are clicks and conversions, you’re looking at half the picture.
This isn’t an anti-vendor rant (ok, maybe just a little). It’s pro-evidence. If someone wants you to believe a tactic has longevity, they need to show both the upside and the downside.
That means, if a pitch says: “Land in the Primary tab, where you belong” and showcases only upside snapshots, ask for:
Spam complaint rate (by MBP)
Unsubscribe rate
Inbox vs. spam placement over time
Reputation telemetry (Postmaster Tools, third-party seeds, panel data)
Customer trust indicators (reply sentiment, preference-center activity)
Proof the lift sticks without wrecking your complaints, unsubscribes, or reputation
If they can’t or won’t show that, you already have your answer.
Why These Services Rarely Work the Way You Think
Yes, some vendors have found ways to nudge tabs classifications — for a minute. But that’s nowhere near enough to guarantee Primary, and it rarely holds.
💌 There’s no switch to flip.
No magic header, code snippet, or DNS setting that guarantees Primary placement for promotional email. Gmail weighs hundreds of dynamic signals (domain/IP reputation, authentication, complaint history, recipient engagement) to make that call.
💌 Placement is personal.
The same campaign can land in Primary for one person and Promotions for another, based on their prior behavior, settings, and preferences… even if everything else about the send is identical.
Data from George Schlossnagle’s post-2019 panel study backs this up. Looking at senders whose campaigns straddled different tabs for different users (or shifted tabs entirely due to algorithm updates), the engagement patterns barely moved. Wanted mail performed, wherever it landed. Unwanted mail didn’t. Tabs simply organize mail; they don’t rewrite intent.
One example he highlights: a sender with a mail-stream that got caught in an algorithmic change and was swept from Updates to Promotions. On the chart, the read-rate lines glide smoothly from one category to the other, with no drop in engagement. Placement changed; performance didn’t.
💌 Tricks don’t last.
Most “hacks” are fragile. Altering headers or metadata, exploiting a gap in detection — Gmail’s machine learning closes those loopholes fast, sometimes in weeks, sometimes in hours.
💌 The risks are real.
Masking the commercial nature of your mail can backfire: increased filtering, spam folder placement, degraded reputation that takes months to rebuild.
💌 It’s bigger than just Gmail.
Yahoo, Outlook, and Apple now all use tabbed or categorized inboxes, too, each with different (even if similar) rules and anti-spam filtering. Even if you gamed Gmail today, you couldn’t replicate it everywhere else.
Here’s a quick rundown of what we’re dealing with, courtesy of the lovely folks at Oracle:
So yes, a vendor might show you a week’s worth of “Primary” seed results. But Primary today isn’t proof of Primary forever. The real flex isn’t screenshots of one shiny lift… it’s a program that earns engagement, campaign after campaign, because the evidence speaks for itself.
The Only Responsible Way to Test This (If You Must)
Stakeholders may still insist on “seeing for themselves.” That’s fine, but a quick A/B and a screenshot aren’t evidence. If you want to prove Primary placement has durable value, the test has to look more like a clinical trial than a marketing stunt.
Design it right:
Multiple campaigns (6-10, not one), balanced by offer, audience size, and timing. Also ensure you’re testing from the same environment, because variance in your configuration (domain, IP, or ESP) will influence where your mail lands.
Randomized splits by mailbox provider, device, geography, and engagement history — because vendors love to cherry-pick the slices that make their numbers look best.
A true holdout group that receives your normal program to reveal any kind of halo effect or degradation in performance.
Tight scope. One domain, one IP — so you actually know what worked. Shared IP pools (and shared domains) introduce too many x-factors.
Guardrails. Keep your spam complaint ceiling below 0.03%, watch for unsubscribe spikes (+25% vs baseline) and figure out when you’ll pull the plug if Postmaster Tools reputation dips or blocklistings pop up.
Measure the whole picture:
💌 Leading signals: placement (where observable), opens, clicks, conversions, replies.
💌 Satisfaction signals: complaint rates (by mailbox provider since not all of them provide data that feeds into the rate you see in your ESP dashboard), unsubscribes, reply sentiment turning negative, or a surge in preference-center activity.
💌 Lagging signals: domain/IP reputation, future campaign engagement, list health (bounces, blocklistings), and revenue per thousand emails (RPM, which normalizes revenue so you can compare campaigns with different volumes).
One note of caution: you’ll never have perfect visibility. Mailbox providers don’t share exact tab placement for every recipient — the best you can do is triangulate from seeds, panels, and engagement. Which is why vendors claiming certainty are selling smoke.
And if someone shows you a single shiny lift from one campaign, that’s not proof. That’s a puppet show.
If you do run the full study, don’t stop at surface metrics. The money’s in the compounding signals:
Click reach (how many unique subscribers engage over time)
Conversion reach (how many unique subscribers buy over time)
Tenure on list (how long people stick before opting out)
Lifetime value (total revenue over a customer’s journey)
That’s where tabs actually help: by segmenting intent, they give you cleaner signals of who’s browsing, who’s buying, and who’s just passing through.
When Pushing for Primary Does Make Sense
If your mail is landing in Promotions, that’s usually where it belongs. Those CTAs, discounts, and over-designed templates are your email walking and quacking like a bushy-tailed lil’ marketing duck. So, of course Gmail will treat it like marketing. And it should.
But there are edge cases where fighting Promotions is justified, such as:
True transactional mail. Password resets, receipts, two-factor codes, account alerts. If these land in Promotions, that’s a problem — because they’re time-sensitive and service-critical.
Non-commercial newsletters or community updates. Think church bulletins, alumni groups, open-source community notes. If the intent is connection, not commerce, Primary is where subscribers expect to see them.
Activism and civic mail. Platforms like Change.org thrive on immediacy and mobilization, not discount codes. Being misrouted to Promotions can dull that urgency.
High-consideration B2B relationship mail. Sales updates in a long buying cycle, personal check-ins from an account manager, or board-level communications. If the recipient expects a 1:1 cadence, Promotions undercuts the relationship.
While decently rare, if you suspect Gmail is placing you in the wrong tab, your best bet is clarity. Work on ways to correct the misclassification rather than attempting to game the system.
What to Pour Energy Into Instead
Whether your mail is being misclassified or simply just suffering from low engagement, the most important thing to take away from this week’s lesson is that the fix isn’t a “magic header” or vendor trick.
It’s making your mail clear and consistent — in setup and in substance — so placement aligns with what the user thinks they signed up for. From there, invest in strategies that compound over time.
So, here’s where to focus instead:
Configuration & Engagement
💌 Make your setup obvious.
Separate transactional vs. promotional streams (e.g. with dedicated subdomains/IPs), authenticate properly, and use sender names/addresses that actually reflect the intent of the message.
Here are some examples for Acme’s Support team:
✅ support@acme.com
✅ help@support.acme.com
✅ From: Acme Support
❌ xy7kw92n@acme-alerts.com
❌ server1@acme.com
❌ From: Acme
💌 Segment based on engagement.
Tabbed inbox providers feed on engagement to decide where to put your mail in the future. The more opens, clicks, and replies you generate, the clearer the “this belongs here” signal becomes.
Stop lumping prospects and customers together. Ease up on ghosts. And don’t hit ‘Send to All’ unless it’s truly relevant.
More relevance = more engagement. More engagement = better placement. It’s not magic. It’s just math.
Content & Experience
💌 Pack real value into every click.
The Promotions tab is not the junk drawer — it’s the shopping mall. Avoid looking like just another cardboard sign in the food court by adding proof (reviews, testimonials, user-generated content), utility (guides, tips, templates), or fun (an Easter egg, a quiz, a scratch-to-reveal).
Nobody knows your audience like you do. Make every click feel like progress, not déjà vu.
💌 Stand out in scrappy ways.
Skip the “get into Primary” chase and focus on tactics that actually cut through the noise — without needing a dev army for solutions like Gmail Annotations and AMP for Email:
Timing: Avoid the top of the hour when everyone’s blasting. Mailbox providers actually give this advice themselves because their servers get so overloaded. Off-beat sends = less rush-hour traffic, more inbox visibility.
Friendly From names: the sender name is the most important factor in whether someone chooses to open an email. Use something recognizable (such as “Lauren from Send It Right” or “Acme Support Team”) instead of a generic “no-reply”. Familiar senders get that instant “Oh hey, I trust this” nod before your subject line even registers.
Micro-interactivity: Simple touches like accordions, hover effects, or even a carousel of products can feel fresh. It’s all about helping your readers connect with your brand, your content, even your sales promotions, in a way that feels immersive, fun, created specifically “for them”. Speaking of fun…
Gamification: Scratch cards, spin-to-wins, progress bars — lighthearted, high-engagement tactics that also send good signals to mailbox providers.
Personalization that matters: Location-aware offers, real purchase history, or behavior-based nudges can be incredibly effective. And when you can’t, try mimicking personalization with smart bundles (“people who bought X also buy Y”).
However you decide to stand out, just remember: clarity beats cleverness here. If they don’t know what’s in it for them in 1.5 seconds, you’ve already lost.
💌 Respect subscriber choice.
Easy unsubscribes, usable preference centers, and healthy list hygiene all reduce complaints (and risk). Let people slow you down, snooze you for a busy season, or pick content types and frequencies they actually want.
Then study those patterns so you can keep the relationship alive (and the complaints down): if snooze requests triple around a certain campaign, maybe it’s your cadence that needs fixing.
Here’s the Bottom Line
Promotions isn’t punishment — it’s placement. Simple as that.
If your goal is sustainable revenue and healthy deliverability, optimize for the aisle your shoppers already walk down, not the cabinet they use for life’s most important things.
If you’re tempted to chase shiny short-term lifts, remember: tabs aren’t the enemy, short-term thinking is.
The marketers who win are the ones playing the long game — building clarity and compounding engagement so your results outlast the latest vendor pitch.
Send It Right. 💌
But wait! Before you go...
“Let’s put today’s lesson into action!
Spend 5 minutes in your own Promotions tab and notice what actually catches your eye (and why).
What did you discover?
Reach out and let me know. ”
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