I'm sure you've heard already that Gmail is now sorting all incoming emails into separate email folders (they call them 'tabs'). That means some of your email will go to a Promotions tab, some will go to a Social tab and some will go to your Primary inbox tab.

Why should you care?

If you download your email into Outlook, as I do, this is not a problem. Outlook picks up email from ALL the tabs. I don't know how it works if you use a different email processor - you might want to check.

If you read and process Gmail online, then this is an issue.

Why do I call it a debacle?

Here's why,

Because Gmail will decide for you which 'tab' your incoming emails should to go. They don't care if you subscribed to a newsletter because you WANTED to receive it. If it's a newsletter, there's a good chance it'll land in the Promotions tab. Why they believe that giving great information always equates to promotion is beyond me.

OK so you might miss out on some newsletters. But...if you sell products online, someone buys, and your shoppingcart directs them to a link to get the product, that email may also land in the promotions folder. Your customer will think you didn't send the information that they expected after handing over their credit card number to you.

See the potential for trouble here? Not good for you.

And that's just one way things can go wrong. The same can happen if someone signs up for your webinar, and the webinar confirmation goes into the Promotions folder.

However, don't panic - there is a fix for this problem.

Lots of smart people have come up with ways to handle this and they've done it more eloquently and in more detail than I could ever hope to. So here's a link to one of the best - and most entertaining - explanations I have read so far.

Having said all that, here's what I've noticed when I went online a couple of times to check what this was all about.

It's inconsistent.

- Some emails are going into my Primary tab even though they are newsletters that were sent to a list.

- Some emails from Yahoo groups are going into my Promotional tab, some into Primary.

- Billpay confirmations from my bank are going into the Promotions folder. (What's promotional about paying your bills!)

So, if you decide to do it Google's way, instead of the options at the link above, be sure to check ALL the tabs every time or you may miss important time-critical stuff.

To minimize the risk of my emails getting lost, on all my opt-in and sales pages, I'm going to put a reminder to Gmail users to always check their Promotions folder for information. That's the best I can do. Unless you have other bright ideas for me?

I hope this helps.