The Email Wars

Google has put out an official Gmail gadget for its Google Desktop product, giving users the option to run multiple instances of different Gmail accounts as standalone gadgets. The tool includes several useful Gmail features like keyboard shortcuts, mail, and contact search, along with the option to star messages. Users can also compose messages in a little pop-out window, which keeps them from having to fire up their browser.

The app is currently Windows-only and requires Google Desktop version 5 or higher, leaving Mac and Linux users of Google Desktop out in the cold. Anyone looking to use Amnesty’s Generator program to convert it for other platforms like OS X’s Dashboard are also out of luck, as Google has not offered it as an iGoogle, Web-ready widget.

So how it this widget going to impact email marketing? Well it could be good or bad. It might drive greater awareness for the inbox when an email arrives, shortening the time from send to action. OR it could become a email management inbox triage engine that will cause people to not click though but instead just delete emails more often without opening them. My other question that I have yet to test it will it count as an open in this widget? Not sure yet but it could skew open and read rates in your campaigns. 

No consider that you can port other emails into your gmail and this might not only affect gmail users. It could quite possibly impact other domains you send to IF there are being aggregated into this new widget. 

Things to consider and another reason why our jobs are not always easy. I often tell my co-workers to arrive stupid each day that they arrive? Why you might ask? Well because each day things like this enter our world that might make user experience easier but at the same time will can impact our results we work so hard to deliver.

If anyone has any results, please share them with me.