According to GWI, 55.8% of adult internet users make online purchases on a weekly basis. This translates not only in serious revenue for online stores, but also in very crowded email inboxes. Since Google really dislikes overstuffed inboxes and poor organization, they are introducing two new Gmail features.
New “Purchases” View—One Place to Track Transactional Emails
First is a dedicated Purchases view that pulls together everything related to online orders—receipts, order updates, and shipping status—into a single, scannable list. It’s a new sidebar view on web and mobile accounts (alongside Starred, Snoozed, and Important views). It provides users with one place to open and immediately see what’s arriving and what’s already delivered.
It doesn’t affect the overall inbox—new triggered emails won’t disappear from the general view. The Purchases view simply aggregates those messages and updates so that users don’t have to hunt through labels or search. Rollout has started globally.
What types of messages will go into the Purchases view
This new feature is meant to house some of the most common types of transactional emails, including:
- Order confirmations and receipts.
- Tracking details, including the arrival date view right in the inbox.
- Delivery status updates
The Purchases view builds on Gmail’s summary cards feature. If you want a deeper refresher on how Gmail’s purchase summary cards work—and what makes an order/shipping email eligible—see our earlier explainer.
Updated “Promotions” Tab—Sorting Emails by Relevance
Remember when Facebook switched its timeline from chronological to algorithm-based? This was quite a shock to many social media marketers. Now, Google does something similar, although on a smaller scale, to the Promotions tab.
In the coming weeks, users will get the option to sort emails by “most relevant.” However, the "most recent” option will be available too. In terms of what Gmail considers to be "relevant," it's helpful, high-quality content, including brands that users engage with the most.
Another small new feature is "nudges"—highlights of any time-sensitive offers or upcoming deals.
This affects only how messages are ordered inside Promotions. It doesn’t remove, hide, or auto-archive emails. The relevance view lives alongside the classic chronological sort, and users stay in control of the toggle.
Is it Going to Affect Email Marketing?
The answer is “yes,” as always. This update is not earth-shattering in itself, but it’s a part of an ongoing trend by Google to change how users interact with emails. A few points:
1. Open rates, especially for transactional emails on mobile, will lose their relevance. By now, it’s obvious—Google wants users to stay in their inbox instead of clicking away to the website. Detailed snippets and summary cards provide necessary information right at the top of the Gmail app. It’s not a bad thing—in the end, users will get the same information and will fulfill their intent. But it’s another sign that open rates are losing their relevance as an email marketing metric.
2. List hygiene and good domain setup will be even more important. While not spelled out explicitly, we can confidently assume that the quality of emails is going to be a factor in determining which emails will land at the top of the “Most relevant” list. For email marketers, it means that even if they passed the “Spam” gate successfully, their emails can end up at the very bottom of the newly sorted list. This is a good reminder to sort out all technical details and solve any remaining issues.
3. High-quality content is still a priority. Relevance and engagement are going to be major factors in determining an email’s position in the updated Promotions tab. Marketers who create emails that people read and interact with will be rewarded. The rest will get buried among piles of other unnoticed emails—good enough not to get in Spam, not good enough to get in front of the user. To succeed, it’s important not only to create relevant content but also to send it to the right segments of readers and use email personalization. Assuming that the "most recent” will be the default option, many users will stick to it.
What if the "most recent” will be the default option?
Judging by the wording in Google’s announcement, the “most relevant” sorting is going to be the default option, meaning many users will not switch to the chronological view. This makes the goal of getting to the top of the list even more critical for marketers.
4. Schema markup is here to stay. As we’ve seen with summary cards, structured data is an important part of the latest Gmail updates. Gmail’s Purchases view and summary cards rely on structured data for order and shipping emails. If you haven’t used it yet, start small: add JSON-LD to confirmations and shipping updates, verify with the Email Markup Tester, and keep the same details in the visible copy. It won’t bump you up in Promotions—that’s about engagement—but it will make post-purchase emails clearer and easier to find.
With every new Gmail update, it’s easier to connect the dots and see Google’s ultimate vision for email: quality over quantity, a cleaner UX, and more of the journey happening inside the app, not on the website. The pie might look smaller—but not for email marketers who adapt.
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