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Google: No favors at Gmail


Tulsi Gabbard's presidential campaign is suing Google for various reasons, primarily for suspending her Google Adwords account. Not really email related, so not really my realm to cover. But something did catch my eye when Laura Atkins blogged about it last week on Word to the Wise:
  • Gabbard's lawyers included a statement in their complaint about how Google's systems were relegating her campaign's mail to the spam folder at Gmail.
  • Google's response, as quoted by Laura, is something that I would sum up as, "Shrug. Go read our sending to Gmail best practices page." Ouch.
Anyway, my point here is, Google doesn't do "favors." It doesn't matter if you're a big brand, a well respected company, a Fortune 50 financial institution, or a presidential candidate. They're going to put your mail in the spam folder if they data shows that's where it should go.

To fix it, improve what you're doing. Send more engaging mail. Submit requests to Google to ask them to reconsider spam folder deliver, if appropriate. (This does actually work.) But going outside of process, whether it be to ask a person there for a favor, or to sue them over it, isn't going to be the way to get your mail delivering to the inbox.

Just another reminder that inbox delivery is driven by data and best practices, not relationships (friendly OR adversarial).

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