What would a Gmail snooze button mean for email marketers?

What would a Gmail snooze button mean for email marketers?

Rumour has it that Google are experimenting with adding a snooze button to the mobile Gmail app. According to Geek.com, a snooze button would allow users to effectively save their email for later.

Your emails can also be Snoozed in this new UI. Snoozing an email means it appears as read until the timer goes off, when it will then float to the top of your Inbox as an unread email. You can choose to snooze an email for a couple of hours or several weeks depending on your need, and you can snooze messages over and over again if you choose to

The meteoric rise in mobile email use has seen users dipping into their inbox more frequently, however sometimes the mobile experience of a brand’s email and website can impede conversion on a smaller screen. Something like this could potentially drive users to re-open emails later on, once they’re in a more convenient setting. Even though we’ve seen users don’t currently triage their email in any great number, an innovation along these lines could encourage this behaviour.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that this feature will make it out into the wild, and even then it remains to be seen if it would have any real effect on users’ behaviour. But this could change the game. again.



  • http://www.getintheinbox.com/ Andy T

    I’m cool with that.

    In my view, more from an email user than consultant, I think people do tend to engage in a “mobile inbox triage” when they check their emails in their spare moments.

    We’ll read the emails on the move but rarely click through because waiting for a page to load is not a good use of that time. If we decide that there is more to do for this email, like click through, we’ll mark it to act on later when there is wifi;
    eg: in the evening in front of the telly or next time we’re in front of our laptop/desktop.

    Some methods include marking as unread, starring or moving to a label/folder, others include not archiving or not deleting.

    This new feature supports that nicely, we can hit snooze so it’s out of the way but will pop back when we know we want to act, eg: later in the evening during “Gmail promo-tab” time.

    Once mobile bandwidth is as good as wifi, this process might not be needed, however, the convention might already be bedded in by then, our smart glasses/contact lenses will spritz everything to us at 1000wpm or it’ll all be downloaded directly into our brains.

    • Luella

      Haha: “downloaded directly into our brains” – going to put my neck on the line and say that will not happen in our lifetimes 🙂

  • Luella

    I welcome this feature – it just makes sense until better tech comes along. What will fundamentally change email is when the functions of devices all used at once take on different but synchronized roles. So, the smartphone is showing you the campaign visuals, the smart glasses are reading you the email and your smartwatch has a call to action whereby you shake your wrist and that item’s added to your checkout. Totally off-topic and wild, but fun to imagine.