This is just a short warning you should carefully and correctly read the data in AdWords when you use Gmail Sponsored Promotions. This is a quite recent tool that can prove effective when used correctly and especially when reported data are well understood. You probably know (it you don’t here it is) Gmail Sponsored Promotions show up in Gmail inboxes as unread messages. They are unsolicited pieces of advertisment, not common discussions between friends or newsletters people previously opted-in to receive. So be cautious, you don’t want to annoy the people receiving another email message they delete instantly.

Given a good subject line you may expect a good open rate from your campaign. And indeed, when you take a look in AdWords you may see impressive number of clicks and CTR while the average CPC is insanely low. If you use the default reporting in AdWords it is very easy to miss the point.

Why? Because the column Clicks doesn’t mean clicks to your website from the content seen by the people. So be cautious. Clicks in the default reporting mean only clicks on the subject line to open the email. Yeap. These clicks are counted and paid, each of them. While they don’t necessarily generate traffic to your website.

This shouldn’t make you give up Gmail Sponsored Promotions. It’s just a matter of clicks, this time in AdWords, to bring the right data onto your display. Simply add the right column by choosing to Modify columns and then choosing “Gmail clicks to website”. New data might look surprinsingly low compared with what you just got used to since the moment you started using Gmail Sponsored Promotions. The cost per click that brought visitors to your website might be around what you see in your other campaigns but stay away from disappointment: Gmail Sponsored Promotions might be an excellent opportunity to gain brand visibility; or leads or clients if you know you convert well using email advertising; and why not, in case your industry has high CPCs on other ad types then Gmail Sponsored Promotions might actually account for cheaper quality leads.