Ads in the Gmail Inbox

An ad that looks like an email

Open the Promotions tab in a personal Gmail account and the top line or two may not be email at all.

They look like messages, with a sender, a subject and a short description, but each is marked as an ad.

These are Gmail ads, bought through AdWords. Click one and it opens inside Gmail to the size of a full email, with pictures, text, a button and sometimes a form or a phone number.

For a business without a mailing list, it is a way into the inbox. It is also easy to waste money on, because it behaves unlike a search ad.

How Gmail ads are charged

The ad has two parts: the teaser in the inbox list, and the full ad that opens when the teaser is clicked.

AdWords charges for the click that opens the ad. Clicks inside it, to your website or phone number, cost nothing extra.

So a teaser that draws curious clicks from the wrong people spends the budget on opens that go nowhere. And the opened ad has to persuade on its own, since many readers will close it without visiting your site.

What Gmail ads suit

People browsing promotions are in a different frame of mind from people searching. They are looking at offers, not hunting for a solution.

• Seasonal offers with a clear end date.
• Events, such as open houses and launches.
• New products or services worth announcing.
• Booking windows open for a limited time.
• Past customers, reached through your own customer list.

The second is a natural fit for many small businesses: an event has a date, a place and a reason to act now, which is exactly what an inbox ad can carry.

Urgency is what they do not suit. Someone with a leaking roof searches for help; they do not wait for an offer among their promotions.

Who sees them

Gmail ads appear in personal Gmail accounts. G Suite business accounts, called Google Apps for Work until last month, show no ads, so these reach people at home rather than at their desks.

That suits consumer offers better than selling to other businesses.

Targeting uses the tools of other AdWords display advertising: location, age, interests, people researching a kind of purchase, keywords, and Customer Match, which reaches the people on your own customer email list.

Start narrow. A tight area and an audience close to your real customers waste less of the budget on opens that lead nowhere.

Writing the teaser

The teaser has very little room: your business name, a short subject line and a line of description, beside a small logo.

Write the subject like an honest email subject, with the offer and its date. A subject such as Install deal ends Nov 30 says more than Big news, and it filters out people the offer is not for.

Use the name people know from your sign or your van.

And do not sound like a personal message. A teaser disguised as a friend's email draws opens from people who feel tricked, and each one is paid for.

The ad that opens

The opened ad is the size of an email, and many people will read it and go no further. It should carry the whole offer: what, how much, for whom, until when and how to act.

Where the format allows, put the important words in text rather than inside an image, so they stay readable on a small screen. One photograph of real work and one button are enough.

Why it needs its own landing page

The button should lead to a page about the offer, not to the home page.

The visitor has already read the details. Landing on a general home page, they have to find the offer again, and many will not bother.

The landing page should repeat the offer's words and picture, then give the details, the end date and a way to act: a form, a booking link, a phone number that can be tapped.

It also has to work on a phone, since that is where most email is read.

A worked example

A home theatre installer with two technicians, mounting televisions and fitting sound systems across one suburb, tried Gmail ads last fall to fill November.

The first teaser said only the company name and Fall special. It drew opens from across the region, many far outside the area served.

The opened ad was a single image of the store flyer, unreadable on a phone, and its button went to a home page that said nothing about the offer.

This month the targeting covers only the municipalities the company serves, and people researching televisions and home audio. The teaser names the offer: wall mounting and a sound bar, installed before December, with the price.

The opened ad gives the details as text beside one photograph of a finished living room, and its button leads to a page with the package, the available dates and a booking form.

Opens fell, which was the point. Each one costs money, and the people opening it now are the ones the offer was written for.

Measuring what matters

AdWords reports the opens and, separately, the clicks from the opened ad to your website. Neither is the result you want.

Track conversions on the landing page's form or booking confirmation, and judge the campaign by enquiries and bookings against what it spent.

Impressive opens with no bookings means a teaser problem, a landing page problem, or both.

The counter-case

Gmail ads are not for every business. A trade whose work comes from urgent searches, or a firm selling mainly to other businesses, is better served by search ads that meet people at the moment of need.

They also need an offer worth opening. A business with nothing time-limited to say has little to put in a teaser.

For a business with a real offer or event, they are worth a careful test: a narrow audience, a specific teaser and a page built for the offer.

Before you start

1. Choose one offer with an end date.
2. Build a landing page for that offer.
3. Set up conversion tracking on the page.
4. Draw the area to match where you work.
5. Write a teaser that names the offer.
6. Put the details in text in the opened ad.
7. Judge by bookings, not by opens.

Step two comes before any ad is written. Without a page that repeats and completes the offer, every paid open ends on a home page that has to start the conversation again.

Writing the search ads that run alongside them is covered in expanded text ads are open to everyone.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.