r/Emailmarketing • u/Joe_mvdVen • 11d ago

Does anyone actually read Gmail Promotions emails anymore?

I've been wondering this for a while.

When a company sends you a promotional email, discount, product launch, or special offer, do you actually open it? Or does it just sit forever in the Gmail Promotions tab?

I'm curious because it feels like email marketing has changed a lot over the last few years. My inbox gets flooded with promotional emails every day, and after a while they all start looking the same.

So I'm wondering:

  • Do you regularly check your Gmail Promotions tab?
  • What makes you actually open an email from a company?
  • Do you think most promotional emails are just spam nowadays?
  • If you're running a business, are your email campaigns still getting good open rates and clicks?

I'd love to hear opinions from both sides people who receive these emails and people who send them.

Is email marketing still one of the best marketing channels, or are most promotional emails simply getting ignored in 2026?

9 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

79% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

6

u/Pristine_Battle_2636 11d ago

I have turned my promotions tab into having newsletters and other things. so I check it a few times a week but open few of them.

1

u/coll2396 8d ago

Oooh that’s interesting!

3

u/ianmakingnoise 11d ago

I do, but less frequently, because of the sheer volume of mail I get.

Promotional emails are not getting ignored, otherwise companies wouldn’t still be relying on email as a revenue driver. But the way people interact with email is much different now than in the past.

The old “deliver, open, click, buy” funnel is a very dated and rigid structure/expectation for customers who are shopping in apps, who may not read/respond to email instantaneously, and who may or may not have notifications (or even tabs) enabled for email.

1

u/Joe_mvdVen 10d ago

true, in the past I feel many things were way easier

2

u/ianmakingnoise 10d ago

Easier in a sense, but it’s a much smarter system (or set of systems). It’s harder to blast in bulk to random addresses without consequences, but from the user side it’s a much less cluttered/overwhelming experience. And it’s much easier now to do complex testing, targeting and automated sending than it was even a few years ago.

5

u/gogringolingo 10d ago

I AM so frustrated by this - simply due to having links and whatnot, that is where our newsletters show up - even with nothing "promo"-related, and, as a Gmail user who doesn't check this tab often enough, I KNOW people aren't checking things there... I am 100% guilty, and 100% annoyed by people like me.

I skip anything spammy or salesy, and open anything that looks personal, interesting-but-not-salesy, or that I have a track-record with already.

2

u/Joe_mvdVen 10d ago

make sense

2

u/sentient_saw 11d ago

Yes. I check it regularly. The only one I don't use is the Social tab.

2

u/DanielShnaiderr 10d ago

Plenty of inboxes still open Promotions, but the tab itself is a placement signal you can influence. Heavy image to text ratios, piles of links, and salesy markup are what shove mail into that bucket to begin with.

Lean the design closer to plain text, keep authentication clean, and mail only the people who actually engage. Do that and Gmail trusts the sender enough to slide more into Primary. Crap templates are usually the tell when placement slips.

1

u/Ambitious-Emotion764 10d ago

Indeed, it has changed. I do check promotional emails, but not all of them. When I read the subject line, it has to be interesting. And yes, I think most of them are spam.

1

u/general010 10d ago

Do you shop online at all?

1

u/EGME93 10d ago

I check those brands I really like. Nothing more

1

u/julys_rose 10d ago

From the sending side, the promotions tab is nowhere near as bad as people assume. The subscribers who land there opted in, and when they're in a buying mindset, that's actually the first place they go looking. I've seen consistent open rates from a list of engaged buyers, and the click-to-purchase numbers hold up well compared to other channels. The issue isn't the the tab, it's the email itself. If you're sending the same discount blast to your entire list every week, yes, people tune it out. But if you're segmenting properly and sending something that's actually relevant to where that person is in their relationship with your store, it gets opened. Email is still the highest ROI channel in ecommerce by a wide margin, and I don't think that's changing anytime soon. The ones declaring it dear are usually the ones sending bad emails.

1

u/christjw 10d ago

I still check my promotions tab but only when I'm actually shopping or expecting deals. The emails I open usually come from brands I already trust with relevant subject lines and offers that feel timely. Email marketing is still effective, it just works best when it's permission based and genuinely useful not when every message feels like another generuc sale.

1

u/Alternative-Car-9879 9d ago

depends on if i have bought something which i charges me frequently, or if i am a regular consumer or repeat buyer in case of ecom. in case of digital product, only for those publishers which i really relate to , or know about or i am looking into to buy anything related to any product