What are the Gmail annotations and markups

Gmail annotations is a feature that allows senders to add notes, labels, a product carousel, expiration dates and other information to their email campaigns to make them stand out in the Gmail promotions tab. While Gmail annotations are preferably used in marketing emails, there is another Google solution for transactional emails, called Gmail markup. Gmail markup lets senders highlight important information in their order confirmation or shipping notification and makes it also easy for the Gmail user to add specific information, such as a restaurant reservation to the user’s Google calendar. Both methods can help senders to increase engagement with their emails and provide a better user experience.

In this blog post I would like to show you how you can add Gmail annotations and markups to email campaigns that you create in your Emarsys account.

How to add Gmail annotations and markups to block-based email campaigns using the Visual Content Editor (VCE)

This Emarsys Help page article explains what needs to be done to add Gmail features, such as the product carousel to your block-based campaigns. Please make sure to register your sender address here first.

How to add Gmail annotations and markups to custom HTML campaigns

You can make Gmail annotations and markups work by creating custom HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) campaigns in which you insert your own HTML source code. However, the HTML source code must be 100% correct to avoid issues so, it is highly recommended to verify your HTML source code by using one of the available tools on the internet. 

1. 1. Register your sender address here

1. 1. Create a custom HTML campaign including the Gmail annotation or markup parts. Please use microdata instead of JSON data. The schema for microdata can be found on this link.

1. 1. When you finished editing the whole HTML source code, please validate the HTML code with this testing tool.

1. 1. Test whether the microdata you added to your custom HTML campaign have the desired result and Gmail annotations and markups are displayed correctly. Also, test how other mailbox providers treat such emails with Gmail specific elements.
      Tip: If you encounter issues with other mailbox providers during your tests, it may be worth creating two separate campaigns: one campaign sent to Gmail and one campaign sent to all other mailbox providers. While this approach can be time-consuming for marketing emails, it could be a viable way for transactional emails which are set up once and will be sent over an extended period.

What’s after the setup

Continue testing while using microdata in your email campaigns. Over time spam filters and filter algorithms adapt to changes which may affect how your emails using microdata will be treated and categorised. To avoid unwanted surprises, you should run tests on a regular basis.

Use Gmail annotations wisely! Not every marketing campaign needs Gmail annotations. It is therefore not recommendable to add Gmail annotations to every marketing campaign you send.

Tip: If you want to specifically test Gmail annotations and how they are displayed in the Gmail promotions tab, you can create your own test email address ending with promotabtesting@gmail.com
An example for your own test address could be company.promotabtesting@gmail.com
The annotations are always displayed when sending a test email to a test account. For other Gmail accounts, Gmail may display or treat your test email differently depending on various factors.

What’s next?

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You can ask questions and provide suggestions for helpful email deliverability topics in the Q&A area Q&A – SAP Emarsys Email Deliverability.

And if you’d like to find out more SAP Emarsys, you can visit the community page: SAP Emarsys CX.