If you use the Gmail app on a smartphone (Android or iPhone), you must have seen marketing emails that appear with a brand logo, a featured image and some offer information in the Gmail promotions tab. This is done using Gmail promotions tab annotation. It may appear as shown in the image below.
Email annotations highlight your message in the Promotions tab with images, deals, expiration dates and more. These annotations require no registration nor whitelist.
Creating Gmail Promo Tab Annotations in Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Create a code snippet with the sample AMPscript markup and edit the underlined areas with your details. If the tab content is the same between emails that use the template, add the code snippet directly under the template <head> tag. If the tab content changes between emails that use the template, add a content area directly under the template <head> tag, then drag in your code snippet.
%%[
SET @JSONStart = Concat(‘<‘, ‘script type=”‘, ‘application/ld+json”‘,’>’)
SET @JSONEnd = Concat(‘<‘,’/’,’script’,’>’)
]%%
%%=TreatAsContent(@JSONStart)=%%
[{
“@context”: “https://schema.org/”,
“@type”: “Organization”,
“logo”: “urlforlogo.png“
},{
“@context”: “https://schema.org/”,
“@type”: “DiscountOffer”,
“description”: “20% off“,
“discountCode”: “PROMO“,
“availabilityStarts”: “2019-01-01T08:00:00-07:00“,
“availabilityEnds”: “2019-09-30T23:59:59-07:00“
},{
“@context”: “https://schema.org/”,
“@type”: “PromotionCard”,
“image”: “https://urlforimage.png“
}]
%%=TreatAsContent(@JSONEnd)=%%
You can remove the part of the code that you do not need. For example, if you do not need offer details, you can remove the following from the above code:
{
“@context”: “https://schema.org/”,
“@type”: “DiscountOffer”,
“description”: “20% off“,
“discountCode”: “PROMO“,
“availabilityStarts”: “2019-01-01T08:00:00-07:00“,
“availabilityEnds”: “2019-09-30T23:59:59-07:00“
}
By using high-quality images and the most relevant information, your emails are more likely to be highlighted at the top of the Gmail Promotions tab. However, there is no guarantee how annotations will appear. They may appear for some users at some times and not always.
Best practices:
- Create a special Gmail testing account for testing — ending in promotabtesting@gmail.com, i.e. mycompany.promotabtesting@gmail.com
- For the logo, use HTTPS URL instead of HTTP
- Avoid having a text-only annotation. Images lead to better subscriber engagement
- Crop images in 538x138px in size with 3.9 aspect ratio. Do not use GIF and WEBP images. Avoid using the same image again and again as the readers may consider it duplicate.
- User deal information like discount and coupon code only if you are offering it in email. Don’t use it just for the sake of using it. Avoid using too much text in this section.
- Mention the expiration date if the deal is time-bound. Using the expiration date gets you two chances to get yourself featured in the promotions tab. The first time is when you send it and the next before 3 days of the expiration date.
- Use the Email Markup Tester provided by Google to check if there are any errors in your code.
Useful Resources on Gmail Promo Tab Annotation
https://developers.google.com/gmail/promotab
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=sf.mc_ceb_google_promotions_tab.htm&type=5
https://developers.google.com/gmail/promotab/best-practices
https://email.uplers.com/blog/gmail-annotations-promotions-tab/
https://www.litmus.com/blog/how-to-utilize-the-power-of-gmails-new-promotions-tab/