Google Gmail Priority Inbox Brings New Meaning to Email Deliverability

Author:

Amy Tierney

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In an effort to reduce information overload in inboxes, search engine giant Google Inc. is launching a new, beta mail-organizing feature to help Gmail users better categorize messages they want to see most.  
 
Email industry experts say that the enhancement reflects ongoing changes by ISPs to improve email delivery.
 
The new tool, called Priority Inbox, sorts email messages in order of importance based on users’ interaction with particular messages and contacts. Google said Priority Inbox is “an experimental new way of taking on information overload in Gmail.”
 
The goal is to make users more productive because they will spend less time sorting through email, according to the company.
 
Priority Inbox groups email into main categories—Important (the priority category), Starred (messages that users want to read later, and Everything Else (messages that aren’t directly moved to the spam folder).  The company categorizes the importance of an email based on whom users send emails to and respond to most. Gmail users can change the classification by marking specific email messages as important or not important to “teach” the tool their specific preferences.
 
“Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules,” said Doug Aberdeen, Google software engineer, in a blog.
 
The company’s changes puts renewed focus on the growing issue of email delivery.
 
“We’re seeing a lot of transition toward engagement deliverability,” said Quinn Jalli, Epsilon's vice president of deliverability, Digital Marketing Solutions - Marketing Technology. “It’s the next evolution of what Google started three years ago.”
 
Google demonstrated how the new feature works in a humorous video.
 
The opt-in feature is one of the largest updates Google has made to Gmail since the email service began in 2004. The tool, which became available to some users on Tuesday, will roll out to all Gmail users within a week.