By Drew FitzGerald

    Retailers from Gap to Groupon tried hard to get users of Google ’s Gmail service not to consider their marketing efforts “promotional.” The effort appears to have failed.

    Six months after Google overhauled Gmail to move marketing messages into a new “Promotions” folder, less than 0.1% of Gmail users are moving those emails into their primary inbox, according to a survey of more than 3 million addresses by ReturnPath.

    The emails labeled promotional cover everything from airfare deals to clothing discounts. Millions of subscribers received emails from marketers suggesting they move those offers out of the promotions ghetto to avoid missing their deals, often adding added step-by-step instructions for how to do it.

    The marketers were “largely unable to convince Gmail users to move their messages,” ReturnPath concluded.

    That bad news comes with a silver lining, however. ReturnPath says the percentage of marketing emails that users open barely fell when emails were shifted to the promotions tab. Some email that went into promotions had previously been labeled “spam.”

    Some companies have complained that the shift is hurting their business. Groupon Chief Executive Eric Lefkofsky earlier this month blamed Google’s rearranging for hurting mail open rates, though he noted Gmail was only “part of the story.”


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