With 1.5 billion active users, Gmail is by and far the largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the world! This free consumer platform is driven by in-app advertisement revenue. From its start in 2004, Gmail is wholly focused on pushing the limits to what we know about the email experience. Users are often driven to Gmail because the ongoing development of new features and enhancements, that is interconnected with the Gmail Apps product suite.
What makes Gmail unique is the reach it has in the business mailboxes. Fully launched in 2009, Gmail turned its sights on developing a mailbox that’s designed for a new Business Environment. It accomplished this by supporting IMAP, third-party app developers, and fully integrated Gmail Apps into the UI. It’s quite likely that half of all corporate communication from Revinate (@BUSINESS) is going to a Gmail mailbox. Making all Gmail sends even more essential to ensure it is done right from the start.
Gmail In-App Classification: The first to pioneer this feature, Gmail unique in-app design built around the use of Tabs. The tabs divide into the following categories:
- Primary
- Social
- Promotions
- Updates
- Forums
User Engagement, which is the cornerstone to Gmail’s placement logic, drives where a received message will get placed. Each user drives a unique engagement, so not all placement results are the same. This means that one user may receive the message in the Promotional tab, while others may receive it in the Primary tab. The logic is Gmail Categorization. Gmail will look for like items (Content, Branding, Domain Reputation) to drive results.
Since Tabs release, there have been many studies that have found correct tab placement will result in Higher Engagement>Conversion Rates. For example, Promotional Messages should get delivered to the promotional tab. Outside of making for better user experience, correct placement goes to a user state of mind. If a user goes into their promotional tab, studies have found that users are more likely to convert. This is compared to similar studies based on previous designs (No Tabs).
Please review the following answer for more information - Gmail Categories.
Gmail Resource: Gmail offers some high-level resources to Bulk Senders (Marketers) if an issue occurs.
Bulk Sender Guidelines - The following are some of the key takeaways from this support document.
- Fully Authenticate All Email Communication: Gmail, unlike other ISPs, is far more focused on Domain-based reputation. It is less likely when a message is fully aligned (DKIM/SPF => From Address) that ongoing reputation issues will occur.
- Clear Opt-in: It means that users need to have provided explicit consent before receiving promotional messages. Gmail defines this by recommending a checked box and never purchasing or using third-party contact lists.
- Customer Engagement is Important for Placement Rates: The document outlines that users adding a From Address to a contact list, or removing it from Spam, is a crucial driver to ensure correct placement results.
Gmail Postmaster Tool - Google created a portal intended to provide High Volume senders access to their email reputation. The portal is broken out into five dashboards.22
- Spam Rate: This dashboard shows the volume of user-report spam vs. email that was sent to the inbox. Only emails authenticated by DKIM are eligible for spam rate calculation.
- IP/Domain Reputation: Domain and IP reputation give a sense of whether the Gmail spam filter might mark emails from that Domain or IP as spam or not. Keep in mind that spam filtering is based on thousands of signals and that Domain & IP reputation is just two of them.
- Feedback Loop: This dashboard only shows up for senders who’ve implemented the Gmail Spam Feedback Loop (FBL). Click any data point on the graph to see a table with the identifiers flagged by FBL and their corresponding spam rates.
- Authentication: Shows traffic that passed SPF, DKIM & DMARC, overall received traffic that attempted authentication.
- Encryption: Shows TLS encrypted traffic vs. all mail received from that domain, and consists of two distinct graphs within the same dashboard.
- Delivery Errors: Shows rejected/temp-failed traffic vs. all authenticated traffic coming from that domain, within a single graph. Typically messages are rejected or temp-failed with the SMTP error codes 550 or 421 respectively. Click a data point to see a table with the reason behind why the traffic was rejected or temp-failed.
Gmail Troubleshooting: The following is a list of issues, and solutions, that can help improve a senders performance at Gmail.
Increased Soft Bounce Rate: Soft Bounces occur when a sender’s reputation has fallen below the acceptable standard defined by Gmail. A poor reputation can occur due to IP/Domain Inactivity (3+ Months of no Email Reputation), Poor List Quality, and Bad Domain Reputation.
--Example SMTP Error--
550 5.2.1 The user you are trying to contact is receiving mail at a rate that prevents additional messages from being delivered. For more information, please visit https://support.google.com/mail/?p=ReceivingRatePerm a1si3553792ejj.42 - gsmtp
550 5.2.1 The user you are trying to contact is receiving mail at a rate that prevents additional messages from being delivered. For more information, please visit https://support.google.com/mail/?p=ReceivingRatePerm a1si3553792ejj.42 - gsmtp
The following actions are recommended to lift the applied Reputation Based Block -
- Increasing/Decreasing Email Frequency: Email inactivity can cause long term damage. Anything greater than 30+ days of email inactivity will require a small domain re-warming. Domain Warming is a small number of sends reintroducing a once active domain into Gmails Filtering Algorithm. Oversending, which is a marketer is over emailing their Data Base, can also produce reputation based blocks. These types of failures will require the sender reducing the number of sends a month down to something that’s more in line within industry standards (One Monthly Newsletter, and One Promotional Offer).
- Sending to Engaged Users: Sending to a list of inactive users, depending on their response, could produce a reputation based block on future sends from your domain. The recommended action is to segment the Gmail list down to users who’ve opened/clicked within the last 12 months.
- Confirmed Opt-In: This includes making sure all users have confirmed opt-in to all promotional messages from your brand. Not having confirmed opt-in, puts a significant risk on the Hotel and potential legal fallout from global laws (GDPR).
- Blacklisted: Having a dedicated IP or Domain Blacklists can produce reputation based blocks at Gmail. For more information on Blacklists, and the process around mediation, make sure to review the following answer: BlackLists.
Messages Clipped: This Gmail only enhancement will cut an email template down to only 100 KB of code rendered. The remaining part of the code is ‘Clipped,' and the following message is rendered within the UI and Mobil device.
For more information on this, and ways it can impact a program’s send, please review the following Revinate Answer: Gmail - Message Clipped.