With 1.5 billion users globally, Gmail takes a massive share of the global email market. There is barely any email marketer who would not have email subscribers using Gmail on the list.
The query of email deliverability to Gmail receivers is becoming more and more crucial for email marketers. Like other mailbox providers, Gmail doesn’t reveal how they filter the emails. Gmail does not even offer anold-style feedback loop service that could support you track user complaints.
Luckily, they have Google Postmaster Tools that give a good set of information about your sender domain and IP address. That information can help you comprehend your sender reputation with Google, which is the most common factor that disturbs your deliverability.
Note that the majority of the Postmaster Tools dashboards will show data only when there is a substantial daily volume of email traffic (up to the order of hundreds) approaching from your authenticated domain. Additionally, the Spam Rate and Feedback Loop dashboards required, your emails to be signed by DKIM to display data.
To access the Postmaster Tools data, you have to include and verify your domain to confirm that you have the ownership of this.
You can confirm the domain by adding a DNS TXT record or by adding a CNAME record as an alternate option.
Once you confirmed your domain, you get access to different dashboards.
Your initial step is to look at the IP reputation over the full 120 days. The IP Reputation report is beneficial when you send emails from dedicated IP addresses where other senders don’t influence the reputation of the IP. If the IP Reputation fell from high to low or weak, then there is something to think.
When you send email messages from shared IP addresses, you don’t have complete control over the IP reputation. If you are a significant volume sender, you can think about switching to a dedicated IP.
Your following step is to look at the domain’s reputation and write down any dates where the reputation changed, and to what degree.
If the domain reputation fell, try to recognize the possible causes of the change. These two are the most common:
- User complaints;
- Insufficient user engagement.
If you have an extreme spam complaint rate with Gmail, this is likely to be the foundation of any deliverabilityissues. As the spam/abuse complaints submitted by email receivers are the primary significative on which the spam filtering system relies.
Open the Spam Rate graph in a new and separate tab in the browser and compare the data. Look at the dates when the reputation reformed and look at what the complaint rate was at that time.
Email senders frequently having the complaint rate at or above 0.5% are mostly going to have deliverability issues.
If you learn user complaints are the reason for problems, you’ll want to find out the source of the claims. In this regard, look at the spam/abuse complaints arriving from other mailbox providers (Hotmail,Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, and local ISPs where you can get that data).
Notice some common things:
1. Do Complaints Go from the Similar List Source?
In case there is a correlation to a specific email mailing list, check the list acquisition source, send a re-subscription email, and continue sending email messages to those individuals who re-subscribes.
If you gather email subscribers through an opt-in form, ensure you use a confirmed opt-in procedure to prevent unsolicited subscriptions.
2. Do Complaints Go for the Similar Email Campaign?
In case there is a correlation to aspecific email campaign, see what could be causing it. Did you change the sender’s email address or name? Did you send the email message when they did not expect it? Did you post an unrelated content?
3. When Was the Last Email Delivered to the Subscriber Before they Sent A Complaint?
In case you haven’t sent email messages to them for months, which is unusual for you, they might not remember about their subscription.
4. When Was the Last Time User Opened Any of Your Emails?
In case they haven’t shown engagement during the previous six months, they might be not concerned about your messages anymore. You can convey a re-engagement campaign to them, and if they don’t reply, they should be eliminated from your active list.
If the complaint rate is 0.0% across the last 30-120 days, but your domain reputation is weak, it probably means that a lot of your email messages are not opened by the users and have not interacted.
Gmail puts extreme importance on user engagement as the identifier of whether or not the email is needed. If a user doesn’t interrelate with the messages received from an actual sender, they’ll put a growing number of emails sent by that source into spam, teaching the filter you should be there.
If your email open rate has fallen, observe when it happened and attempt to find out the apparent causes analyzing the data in Google Postmaster Tools.
Most of the time, Google Postmaster Tools can display that your sender’s reputation is good, yet Google puts your message to spam. In this scenario, you may continue sending email messages as you used to and wait. The problem may be resolved in itself after some weeks. Google can transform your email placement from Spam to Inbox. However, you don’t want to enhance the number of sent email messages during this time.
In case the situation doesn’t modify, you’ll want to segment your mailing list and keep sending it to the most engaged and active Gmail users only, i.e., to those who opened at least one email message from you during the past 30 days. Positive user engagement should display Gmail that your emails are desired and should be sent to the Inbox.
Receiving a new domain and IP is suggested when nothing else helps. You’ll want to warm-up the new domain and IP by starting sending 1000 email messages and enhancing the volume by 10% daily. Again, submit to “hot” subscribers during the warm-up period to receive as many clicks, opens, and replies as possible.