Gmail is changing the way it hosts and displays images. How will this affect email marketing?

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Google has recently announced a significant change in the way images will be displayed in Gmail users' emails. In short, what will happen is that when an email is opened, the images contained will be downloaded automatically. This will be done by hosting these images on Google's servers. This has implications in the area of ​​security (which will improve significantly) and in measuring openings (measuring openings is normally done by including an invisible image - pixel - in the email. When the email is opened and the images are downloaded - including this pixel -, the server where the image is hosted receives a call and the opening is counted. Since these images will no longer be hosted at the advertiser's "home" but at Google's "home", openings cannot be measured by this method). Thus, one of the most widely used metrics for measuring the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns (the open rate) will no longer reflect real data . You can see Google's explanation of the change at this link . For those of you who want to delve deeper into the change from a "technical" point of view, this post will be of great help.


We believe that there are two fundamental changes that email marketing will undergo with these modifications.

1. We will see an increase in CTR and Conversions among Gmail users.

One of the main changes that Gmail users will notice is that images, now hosted on Google, will be downloaded automatically without having to click on “download images”. This is excellent news . Gmail users who receive commercial emails will see the images downloaded automatically when they open the message. From a branding point of view, there will be a gain in “coverage” and impact . Creativity (and all its elements) will gain prominence.



Source: www.clickz.com

If the content displayed is relevant to the user (which requires having done the homework beforehand - segmentation, personalization, testing), it is expected that the click rate and conversions will increase.

2. Campaign KPIs will need to be reviewed.

All those email marketing professionals cio and cto email lists who measure the effectiveness of their campaigns through the open rate will have no choice (at least when analyzing the data among Gmail users) but to change their metric. From our point of view, this is good, since if the goal of email marketing is to sell, what we will be interested in measuring will be the interactions between users and the offer (CTR), and conversions. From this perspective, the open rate is a metric that says less about these issues (and says more about the acceptance of the brand among the users of the database and the commercial pressure that they are willing to bear).

In any case, while it is true that the impact of a subject on the opening rate is key, the fact that in the B2C databases of our country the users with Gmail accounts are around 15% or 20%, leaves more than enough margin to carry out tests and optimize the openings.



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Comments on “ Gmail changes the way it hosts and displays images. How will this affect Email Marketing? ”
Jose Argudo says:
December 19, 2013 at 8:31 am
The Open Rate has become somewhat ambiguous after these changes. Let's see, the open rate is calculated when the subscriber opens the email and an image called a pixel is downloaded. This image is transparent, it cannot be seen, but when the download request is made, an opening is counted.
What happens here? Gmail will cache these images. Will we lose the opening count because of this? No. Why? Very simple:
1.- This image is unique for each subscriber and for each newsletter.
2.- For Google to cache the image, the email must be opened by the subscriber, and to cache the image, a download request must be made to it, even if it is from Google's servers.
Therefore, the subscriber opens the email, the image is downloaded and cached, and the opening is counted.
The opening count is not lost.
What is lost are the multiple openings, because the next times that "that" user opens "that" specific email, the cached image is offered.