Google claims that typical Priority Inbox users spend 43% more time reading important mail compared to unimportant, and 15% less time reading e-mail overall as compared to Gmail users who don’t use Priority Inbox. Good news for e-mail power users, and bad news for e-mail marketers who are almost certainly doomed to fall under the “everything else” category.

Implement a Double Opt-In

I recommend implementing a double opt-in sign-up form for all e-mail communications with potential consumers. Double opt-in is the process by which users sign up via an opt-in form and then confirm via e-mail. While this process can decrease a marketer’s list of e-mail addresses by sometimes up to 50%, it ensures that those who complete both steps are engaged — well, engaged enough to at least open your first e-mail and click the confirmation link.

Offer Content & Frequency Preferences

Another way to better personalize e-mail communications with recipients is to set up a preference center in which users can choose how often they’d like to receive e-mails. Furthermore, the option to customize content helps target communications based on a user’s interests. The key is finding a way to be relevant and engaging to your audience.

As an advanced step, I recommend offering up dynamic content that changes based on a user’s behaviors on a site. If he or she bought running shoes, for example, serve up content relevant to running in your next e-mail communication with that customer.

Benchmark Open and Clickthrough Rates

Implementing double opt-in procedures and allowing for customization preferences increases the likelihood that e-mail recipients will open and engage with a marketer’s content. To make sure these tactics and others are working, I suggest benchmarking open and clickthrough rates to keep track of changes.

I urge marketers to strive for high clickthrough percentages based on open rates. You don’t want to have an open rate of 30% and then a clickthrough rate of 0.5%. That’s not good. You want to ideally get it to where 30-40% of the opens get clicks.

To do that,  urge marketers to stay away from teasing people with great subject lines that lead to lame offers — be honest in your subject line pitch, and try to reflect the offer as best you can.

Conduct A/B Split Tests

Lastly, it’s advisable to A/B test e-mails, sending out two versions of an offer to small sample sizes to see which performs best. Of course, from there, you send the top performer to the rest of the list.

If creating and testing two versions of an offer isn’t realistic for your team, I suggests another option. Test a small sample, say 100 e-mails, and see what the open and clickthrough rates are. Make sure that they are at least as good or better than your traditional rates. If they’re much lower, you have to totally revamp that effort until you can get it performing better.

Conclusion

I believe that Gmail’s model for Priority Inbox will soon expand to other e-mail providers in an effort to improve the user experience and continue to drive traffic for e-mail providers. As a result, it’s in the best interest of marketers to shape up their e-mail programs to account for such possibilities.