gmail
My Kickbox colleague Jennifer Nespola Lantz is back with another deep dive on a very timely topic! This time around, that topic is Gmail, and she covers best practices, email authentication, engagement, and other important things senders need to know about Google’s favorite mailbox provider. Check it out here.
Are emails sent from your G-Suite/Google Workspace corporate email account going to the spam folder (particularly, at Gmail or Microsoft-hosted domains)? Here’s possible reasons why and what to do about it.Make sure you, or your IT person or domain administrator, has fully configured DKIM email authentication for your domain name in Google Workspace. Keep in mind: this does not guarantee inbox placement, but you’ll struggle mightily without it. Outbound email messages need to be authenticated with a DKIM signature specific to your domain name.Ignore the blocklistings. Here’s the scenario: You looked up your Google sending IP address and you see that it’s on the SPAMCOP, SPAM EATING MONEY, SORBS, or UCEPROTECT blocklists. That means it must be related to this spam folder placement, right? No, it is not. Short answer; except for possibly Spamhaus, Google and Microsoft do not use blocklists to determine spam folder placement. There are hundreds of
It’s crazy to realize that Gmail released tabs back in May 2013, so we’re just shy of a ten year anniversary of this functionality. A functionality that often confounds and annoys marketers. And it might even be crazier to recall that the guidance of the time (here’s Ken Magill) was essentially send wanted content and you’ll be just fine.Ultimately, that’s still true today, just about ten years later. Gmail’s attempt to categorize messages into the primary, social, promotions, updates or the forums tab isn’t an attempt to marginalize senders, but is instead meant to help both email senders and their recipients. Sender email messages are easily found by those most interested in them, and recipients benefit based on a categorized inbox that organizes inbound messages into coherent and easily-navigated groupings.In the past, I’ve collected and shared guidance from across the Internet on how best to “escape” the Gmail promotions tab.
Looks like GPT is down again — it’s not just you. The user interface for Google Postmaster Tools is showing a spinning wheel and nothing else, as of 9:00 am US central time on Friday, March 3rd. When this happened last time, the API remained up (so if you pull GPT data into a third party tool you are possibly unaffected) and when GPT returned, no data seemed to be lost. Hang in there — I’m sure folks at Google are aware and working on the issue.
Google Postmaster Tools, the very handy domain reputation dashboard provided free of charge from the folks behind Gmail, is having trouble right now. Since at least early afternoon on Thursday, February 9th, users have been greeted with an eternal spinning wheel after logging in. A few folks have suggested that hitting refresh a bunch of times might get you past this, but I wasn’t able to have any luck with that myself. Thus, if you’re experiencing trouble with GPT at the moment, know that it’s not just you, and I’m sure Google is working on getting everything back up and running as soon as possible.
This is a question I get a lot. Does Gmail use any blocklists? Or, somebody will tell me that they’re having Gmail issues, and they’ve plugged their own IP address into an online blocklist lookup tool, and they are sure that any results found (blocklisting issues) must somehow be part of the underlying cause of their deliverability woes. Except, that’s just about never the case. Here’s why.There are a zillion blocklists out there. Speaking specifically just about DNSBLs (IP-based blocking lists), there’s a good 90+ of them. But blocklists are a bit like blogs, in that anybody can publish them and the fact that it’s been published doesn’t mean that anybody is guaranteed to be actually looking at the what has been published. The net here is that there are a lot of blocklists that, if your IP or domain ends up listed by them, this does not mean that
Axios, the Washington Post, and others are reporting that the Gmail political email pilot program is coming to an end.Axios buries the lede on this one — putting the important bit (to me) at the very end: “Google’s pilot email program, which saw more than 100 political committees participate, will end January 31, and the company is evaluating next steps.”More from the Washington Post: “The company will let the program sunset at the end of January instead of prolonging it, Google’s lawyers said in a filing on Monday.” The filing is an attempt to get the RNC “unfair spam filtering” lawsuit against Google dismissed. How the shutdown of the pilot program ties to that effort, I am not equipped enough to say at the moment, but I’ll be curious to learn more.
Multiple folks are reporting Gmail delivery issues today — both “571” style spam bounce blocks and spam folder placement. Some of the affected folks seem to be sending corporate mail, outbound from Proofpoint or Microsoft O365 hosted environments. It happens to some folks from time to time, but there are enough reports of it out in the wild that I think that perhaps Google released a significant Gmail filter update within the past 1-3 days and that it might be a bit buggy. It already sounds like some of those same folks are now seeing improvement. If you’re affected, be sure to submit sample messages via the Gmail Sender Contact Form — though they do not always respond, they do review every ticket, and in a scenario like this, sending them data and feedback is important. (Click here to learn more about that sender form process.)Of course, you need to
The other day, I ran across a complaint on Linkedin. “Just saw another email go to the Promotions Folder with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC set up perfectly. Stop telling people this will fix their e-mail problems!” It’s not the first time I’ve heard this, and I can understand why the author is frustrated. But, it’s important not to miss the true point — email authentication will help to improve inbox delivery. Because it does! But there’s a nuanced explanation to go along with that. The devil truly is in the details.Email authentication is fantastic. SPF and DKIM both allow you to set yourself up as YOU in the eyes of mailbox providers — as opposed to just being one of the many clients of ESP or CRM platform X, based on a shared IP address or shared DKIM domain. This is a good thing, but it’s just the start.Setting yourself
I finally broke down and did it. I set myself up as my own mailbox provider. I’ve got some of my inbound mail (I’ve got multiple addresses and domains) pointed at my new infrastructure and I’ve had lots of fun these past few weeks getting back into the role of postmaster.Why did I do it? All of the talk about Google potentially letting political senders bypass Gmail spam filters started to annoy me, first of all. And beyond my political concerns, Gmail allows a lot of mail through to my spam folder that I wish they would just block outright. So, with my own server, I can block whatever domains and IPs I want.I also wanted to bust the myth that hobbyist and small volume mail servers are effectively locked out of Gmail. I know from experience that it’s not true, and I wanted to have a server or service I