Help: My Gmail biz domain emails are going to spam!
Joe asks: "Help! We've been using Gmail to host our company emails without any issues until recently. Now, emails sent from my business account are suddenly getting flagged as spam. Even within ongoing threads with clients and vendors. I use [service] for email tracking.
"Any idea what might be causing this? I need it to stop, as it is delaying vital communication!"
Hey, that can be a challenging problem, and a tougher-than-average one to solve, when it's affecting Google Workspace (Gmail)-sent domain emails, versus email messages sent from an email marketing platform, like an AWeber, Mailchimp, or one of those marketing clouds. While the overall deliverability principles are the same (engagement and permission rule!), what you do to troubleshoot and fix issues might be a bit different.
If I were in your shoes, here's what I would do.
First: Check for Technical Compliance & Authentication
First thing is, make sure you're complying with all the technical bits that Google requires of email senders. Nowadays, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Yahoo all have very similar sender requirements, and if your email messages don't comply, you're going to have a really hard time getting reliable inbox delivery. Yes, this effectively applies to 1:1 corporate email, too. Find my compliance guide here and review it in detail.
The biggest bits here are SPF, DKIM and DMARC, email authentication and email-related domain settings. Especially DKIM authentication. Especially aligned DKIM authentication, which means configuring DKIM so that a DKIM signature header is added to all emails and in that configuration, it uses your domain, not the default domain that Google uses.
If you send emails as spamresource.com, you MUST have DKIM configured for spamresource.com in your Google Workspace control panel. Here's how.
After configuring SPF, DKIM and DMARC, use the free third party tester tool at aboutmy.email to confirm that you've got all of those technical bits correct.
But be aware that it's not ONLY about the technical bits. You need to get those right, yes. But passing those checks is not enough to guarantee inbox placement. Even after passing all of those checks, you can still have a domain reputation issue that is causing your mail to go to the spam folder.
Next: Time for Troubleshooting Mode
This is where it gets trickier. You might need to make some changes to how you do things. Here are some things to do (and stop doing) to get your domain reputation house in order.
Stop sending cold lead emails. It's not about my personal problem with them – it's about the nature of this process, and the data involved, resulting in very low interest and low engagement, and at low volumes, this is very easily and quickly damaging to a sender's domain reputation and it, in a nutshell, causes stuff like this to happen.
Stop using third party trackers in your emails. See below (point five) for more general guidance on linking to or embedding stuff with domains out of your control, but these third party tracking things are really the ones most likely to be a problem.
Don't buy lists or use third party email list data. Lack of permission means low interest, means low engagement from recipients, leading to high spam complaints, all of which means that spam folder delivery (or even blocking) is likely.
Don't use "auto warming" or "reputation automation" tools. These tools often cause sender reputation problems. They sometimes offer "pre-warmed" domains or email accounts that they allow you send as, but this doesn't build a long term reputation for your domain. Worse, they often direct you to send emails to specific accounts they manage, a sort of "robot army" of dummy accounts that will blindly click "not spam" in an attempt to boost your reputation. Gmail eventually figures this out and takes a dim view of it. And if it does work? Your sending reputation isn't "set it and forget it." It is, instead, constantly reactive to what you're doing. Meaning, build up your rep with fake credentials, and that rep will change – the goodness of it will fade away – as soon as you stop using the service. It could end up being a drug you can't get off of.
Be careful about linking to third party content. Your domain reputation is affected by the reputation of the domains you link to. Sometimes the big, well known ones end up causing spam filtering problems – links to video-hosting sites like Youtube and Vimeo (Simon Harper reported on an issue with Vimeo links that he recently ran into), or link shortener or link tracking domains (I've run into this myself in the past with link shorteners) or open tracking pixel thingies. Those open tracking pixel thingies are often used in cold lead or other unsolicited emails, meaning they often have reputation issues, meaning that they're an easy way for you to trip up and damage your own reputation. Check where you're linking to – test removing those links, and sometimes, you'll actually get lucky and the spam folder issue just goes away.
Create an email newsletter and invite people to sign up for it. Build up that list and send your newsletter on the regular. This, ultimately, is how you build a good sending reputation for your domain, to help ensure that your emails are wanted – driving engagement (interactions) – and by extension, Gmail will note this and route your mail to the inbox. This is a slight oversimplification, but ultimately, that's what it boils down to. How do you grow your newsletter list? Ask Dan Oshinsky.
There's a lot of "no"s here. I'm sorry to be such a negative Nancy. But when I say "stop doing X" it's because, in all of these cases, many people have approached me over the years, asking for help, and when I investigate, their problems were directly attributable to the bad thing that I now implore you to stop (or avoid) doing. These things cause spam folder placement for your email domain, and I've got the receipts to prove it.
Google Tools Can Help
There's this thing called Google Postmaster Tools, and you need it. GPT is Google's reputation dashboard. GPT is how you're going to monitor your domain reputation as you work to troubleshoot and fix things. It's very satisfying to watch that domain reputation slowly climb its way back upward, let me tell you. And very frustrating that the improvements might take longer than you expect to improve your reputation.
You can actually reach out to Google for help. Google has a form where you can request that they reconsider routing your mail to the spam folder. They get lots of tickets, and I'm sure lots of people lie to them. And a lot of people probably claim to be sending perfectly technically configured email messages when they're not. Be wise here. Don't waste their time when reaching out. Make sure you're doing everything right, both from the technical perspective, and the perspective of email permission best practices. If you're sending spam, or broken email messages, they know. They already know. And they're going to ignore your request for help. Don't reach out to them until you're absolutely sure that you've reviewed everything that could be going wrong.
If you've got that rare case where everything is fine on your end and you're sure the issue is due to a Google bug; submitting a request via the form can likely help. But make sure it's a true statement when you make it.
Final Tips: Blocklists and Choice of Platform
It's not about blocklists. Sometimes people get confused, thinking that there's no way that they could have a domain reputation issue, because they plugged their email domain (or sending IP address) into a blocklist checker. That's not how Gmail works. That's not how Microsoft works. They, and many other mailbox providers, have their own internal tracking of domain reputation. Yes, some third party blocklists (like Spamhaus) are used by big mailbox providers, but no, checking an online blocklist checker isn't really how you troubleshoot any of this. It's just not relevant 99.9% of the time. (Which is a big part of why I no longer run my own blocklist checker.)
Sometimes it's about Google and Microsoft not playing nice. If you're just some random person using a domain to email ten people a month from your Google Workspace Gmail account for your domain, you're really not in a position to move the needle very much when it comes to email reputation and spam folder versus inbox delivery. It's possible, in cases like this, to be sending to Microsoft-hosted mailboxes from a Google-hosted email account, and find that the mail goes to spam because of some reputation issue between these two big goliaths. It can and does sometimes happen, in either direction.
If you've got a smaller subscriber base, if you can, take note of whether or not those recipients host their own mailboxes mostly on Google or Microsoft – and consider moving your domain email to the same platform. Meaning, at this tiny level, move your domain to Microsoft 365 if most of your subscribers live there, but you don't. Or, move to Google Workspace, if most of your subscribers live there, but you don't. If you're all within the same walled garden, you potentially bypass some of these issues. (Another example of me greatly oversimplifying things; but if I didn't, this guidance would be 10,000 words long.)
Joe asks: "Help! We've been using Gmail to host our company emails without any issues until recently. Now, emails sent from my business account are suddenly getting flagged as spam. Even within ongoing threads with clients and vendors. I use [service] for email tracking.
"Any idea what might be causing this? I need it to stop, as it is delaying vital communication!"
Hey, that can be a challenging problem, and a tougher-than-average one to solve, when it's affecting Google Workspace (Gmail)-sent domain emails, versus email messages sent from an email marketing platform, like an AWeber, Mailchimp, or one of those marketing clouds. While the overall deliverability principles are the same (engagement and permission rule!), what you do to troubleshoot and fix issues might be a bit different.
If I were in your shoes, here's what I would do.
First: Check for Technical Compliance & Authentication
First thing is, make sure you're complying with all the technical bits that Google requires of email senders. Nowadays, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Yahoo all have very similar sender requirements, and if your email messages don't comply, you're going to have a really hard time getting reliable inbox delivery. Yes, this effectively applies to 1:1 corporate email, too. Find my compliance guide here and review it in detail.Next: Time for Troubleshooting Mode
This is where it gets trickier. You might need to make some changes to how you do things. Here are some things to do (and stop doing) to get your domain reputation house in order.- Stop sending cold lead emails. It's not about my personal problem with them – it's about the nature of this process, and the data involved, resulting in very low interest and low engagement, and at low volumes, this is very easily and quickly damaging to a sender's domain reputation and it, in a nutshell, causes stuff like this to happen.
- Stop using third party trackers in your emails. See below (point five) for more general guidance on linking to or embedding stuff with domains out of your control, but these third party tracking things are really the ones most likely to be a problem.
- Don't buy lists or use third party email list data. Lack of permission means low interest, means low engagement from recipients, leading to high spam complaints, all of which means that spam folder delivery (or even blocking) is likely.
- Don't use "auto warming" or "reputation automation" tools. These tools often cause sender reputation problems. They sometimes offer "pre-warmed" domains or email accounts that they allow you send as, but this doesn't build a long term reputation for your domain. Worse, they often direct you to send emails to specific accounts they manage, a sort of "robot army" of dummy accounts that will blindly click "not spam" in an attempt to boost your reputation. Gmail eventually figures this out and takes a dim view of it. And if it does work? Your sending reputation isn't "set it and forget it." It is, instead, constantly reactive to what you're doing. Meaning, build up your rep with fake credentials, and that rep will change – the goodness of it will fade away – as soon as you stop using the service. It could end up being a drug you can't get off of.
- Be careful about linking to third party content. Your domain reputation is affected by the reputation of the domains you link to. Sometimes the big, well known ones end up causing spam filtering problems – links to video-hosting sites like Youtube and Vimeo (Simon Harper reported on an issue with Vimeo links that he recently ran into), or link shortener or link tracking domains (I've run into this myself in the past with link shorteners) or open tracking pixel thingies. Those open tracking pixel thingies are often used in cold lead or other unsolicited emails, meaning they often have reputation issues, meaning that they're an easy way for you to trip up and damage your own reputation. Check where you're linking to – test removing those links, and sometimes, you'll actually get lucky and the spam folder issue just goes away.
- Create an email newsletter and invite people to sign up for it. Build up that list and send your newsletter on the regular. This, ultimately, is how you build a good sending reputation for your domain, to help ensure that your emails are wanted – driving engagement (interactions) – and by extension, Gmail will note this and route your mail to the inbox. This is a slight oversimplification, but ultimately, that's what it boils down to. How do you grow your newsletter list? Ask Dan Oshinsky.
There's a lot of "no"s here. I'm sorry to be such a negative Nancy. But when I say "stop doing X" it's because, in all of these cases, many people have approached me over the years, asking for help, and when I investigate, their problems were directly attributable to the bad thing that I now implore you to stop (or avoid) doing. These things cause spam folder placement for your email domain, and I've got the receipts to prove it.Google Tools Can Help
You can actually reach out to Google for help. Google has a form where you can request that they reconsider routing your mail to the spam folder. They get lots of tickets, and I'm sure lots of people lie to them. And a lot of people probably claim to be sending perfectly technically configured email messages when they're not. Be wise here. Don't waste their time when reaching out. Make sure you're doing everything right, both from the technical perspective, and the perspective of email permission best practices. If you're sending spam, or broken email messages, they know. They already know. And they're going to ignore your request for help. Don't reach out to them until you're absolutely sure that you've reviewed everything that could be going wrong.
If you've got that rare case where everything is fine on your end and you're sure the issue is due to a Google bug; submitting a request via the form can likely help. But make sure it's a true statement when you make it.
Final Tips: Blocklists and Choice of Platform
It's not about blocklists. Sometimes people get confused, thinking that there's no way that they could have a domain reputation issue, because they plugged their email domain (or sending IP address) into a blocklist checker. That's not how Gmail works. That's not how Microsoft works. They, and many other mailbox providers, have their own internal tracking of domain reputation. Yes, some third party blocklists (like Spamhaus) are used by big mailbox providers, but no, checking an online blocklist checker isn't really how you troubleshoot any of this. It's just not relevant 99.9% of the time. (Which is a big part of why I no longer run my own blocklist checker.)Sometimes it's about Google and Microsoft not playing nice. If you're just some random person using a domain to email ten people a month from your Google Workspace Gmail account for your domain, you're really not in a position to move the needle very much when it comes to email reputation and spam folder versus inbox delivery. It's possible, in cases like this, to be sending to Microsoft-hosted mailboxes from a Google-hosted email account, and find that the mail goes to spam because of some reputation issue between these two big goliaths. It can and does sometimes happen, in either direction.
If you've got a smaller subscriber base, if you can, take note of whether or not those recipients host their own mailboxes mostly on Google or Microsoft – and consider moving your domain email to the same platform. Meaning, at this tiny level, move your domain to Microsoft 365 if most of your subscribers live there, but you don't. Or, move to Google Workspace, if most of your subscribers live there, but you don't. If you're all within the same walled garden, you potentially bypass some of these issues. (Another example of me greatly oversimplifying things; but if I didn't, this guidance would be 10,000 words long.)
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