It’s beginning to look a lot like Pinterest. 

Gmail is experimenting with a new layout option for its Promotions tab. If your small business uses email to market itself, this could ultimately change how you put together your messages.

Right now, Gmail users see all of their incoming emails in a long list that consists exclusively of text. With the new “grid view,” Gmail displays promotional messages in a Pinterest-like layout. Each message is represented with a headline, a little teaser text and a nice big picture. (Users who hate the new look still retain the ability to go back to the old layout.)

Why is Google doing this? Promotional emails tend to have a lot of cool, enticing imagery—that nobody sees because they delete those messages without ever opening them. Gmail is betting that putting the pictures front and center will lead more recipients to actually read those emails.

The grid could be an opportunity for small businesses, if their promotional emails are optimized to work with this layout. Gmail has a guide (and some starter code) at bit.ly/Wz4y2W, but here are the highlights.

» Your email should include a “featured image” that’s at least 580 pixels wide and 400 pixels tall. If your email doesn’t have an image that big, Gmail will pull text from your message and display that instead.

» It’s also a good idea to use Google’s official code in your emails because that code allows you to explicitly state which picture should be treated as the featured image. Otherwise, you’re letting an algorithm make the decision.

» The sender name needs to be 20 characters or less. Anything longer will be cut off.

»  The subject line should be 75 characters or less, or you risk having it truncated.

»  The grid view also will display a “sender image”—a tiny icon that shows who’s sending the email. That could be a neat place to show off your company logo or your headshot. But Gmail will only pull a sender image from a verified Google+ page. (Google is going to do everything it can to get you to use Google+.)

Want to see how the grid view looks in your inbox? Sign up at g.co Want to see how the grid view looks in your inbox? Sign up at g.co/gmailfieldtrial. You’ll need a “gmail.com” address, not a branded email account through the company’s Google Apps service. Keep in mind that not everybody will be selected as a test user.