Best Practices

Email annotations let you include images, deals, expiration dates, and other offers to help bring your emails to life. By using high-quality images and the most relevant information, your emails are more likely to be viewed and clicked on within the Gmail Promotions tab.*

This section outlines best practices for annotating your email messages.

Images

  • Avoid text only. This space was designed to highlight the visual components of your promotional email. To improve performance, try using product or lifestyle images.
  • Crop well. Images are center-cropped automatically. The supported aspect ratios are 4:5, 1:1, 1.91:1.
  • Avoid reusing images. Keep your promotional email fresh and engaging by using unique images. Email messages that reuse the same image may be disregarded as duplicates by users.
  • Use HTTPS (not HTTP) for image URLs.

Deal badge

Highlight the features of your promotion, such as "20% off" or "Free Shipping."

  • Be specific. Identify the details of your promotion, such as the discount percentage or promo code.
  • Don’t use run-on sentences. Avoid using more than 4 words or full sentences in deal badge, as the badge space competes with your subject line.

Logo URL

Use an HTTPS (not HTTP) URL. This logo selection only shows in the email preview.

Discount code

Only use a discount code if you have it featured in the email. Don't repurpose this space, as it always says "Code" before the text.

Expiration date

  • Using this feature allows an email two opportunities to preview at the top in a bundle: once when it is first sent and again within 3 days of the offer expiring.

  • Don’t leave an expired date in the annotation, as it will be read as an old offer and the email will not populate into a bundle.

  • Specify the time and time zone (for example, "2018-12-30T23:59:59-0700"). For more information date formatting, see Format date and time.

* Emails are grouped automatically based on a number of factors.