Our system automatically detects higher-than-normal spam complaints through a program known as a "feedback loop" (FBL), which we have set up with all of the major Mailbox Providers (MBPs).
Spam complaints and feedback loop notifications from Gmail work a little differently. This article explains how the process works, how to monitor spam complaints in Gmail Postmaster Tools and steps you can take to make sure your spam rate remains within the acceptable threshold.
How Gmail's feedback loop works
The process with Gmail differs from how the feedback loop works with other MBPs. Here's how:
- Spam complaints made by Gmail customers are not visible in your campaign reports.
- The Gmail FBL notifications we receive contain figures as a percentage only, based only on emails that reach the inbox, as opposed to the total emails sent.
- Gmail customers who mark an email as spam are not unsubscribed from your list, and there is no way of knowing which recipients complained. Future emails sent to them will go straight to junk mail.
How we handle Gmail complaints
We monitor our sending domains? reputation in Gmail Postmaster Tools and when the spam complaint percentage for a sender exceeds 0.3% we notify the administrator for your account to let them know of the high spam rate and assist with getting things back on track.
If complaints rates are high enough that we need to contact you, it means that your Sender Reputation with Gmail has been badly affected. As a result:
- More of your emails are filtered straight to the junk folder, impacting your open and click rates
- Future emails are more likely to be blocked by Google's spam filters, so even your most engaged subscribers may not receive your messages.
When a sender receives high complaint rates it also damages our Sender Reputation and relationships with MBPs, which in turn, negatively impacts all of our customers.
If we do get in touch with your administrator because of high complaint rates at Gmail, rest assured we're making contact to help investigate the problem, and hopefully solve it.
Proactively monitoring your reputation with Gmail Postmaster Tools
Google enforces stricter policies for bulk senders, which is a positive move for the email industry and is good for the deliverability of legitimate mail.
Google advises that senders should keep "spam rates " below 0.10% and avoid ever reaching a spam rate of 0.30% or higher?. Senders must stay below this threshold of 0.3% if they want their emails to land in Gmail inboxes.
To proactively monitor your spam rates we recommend setting up Gmail Postmaster Tools, a free tool offered by Google using a Gmail or Google Suite email address.
Please note a sender must meet a daily email volume threshold before their data shows up in Google Postmaster Tools, which includes all traffic to gmail.com and googlemail.com addresses.
While Google doesn't publish the specific threshold, we've found that if you are sending a few hundred emails per day to unique Gmail users, sender data will be generated for that day. It can also take a few days for your data to show in Gmail Postmaster Tools. There is more information in the Postmaster Tools FAQ.
Maintaining a healthy Sender Reputation with Gmail
Gmail uses thousands of signals to filter incoming emails and one of the strongest indicators is how recipients interact with your emails. These interactions give Gmail a picture of how much mail coming from a sender is wanted and safe versus unsolicited or unwanted.
The negative signals for unsolicited mail include clicking the "Report spam" button and moving a message to the spam folder. These signals are especially weightier for the first few emails that a user receives and let Gmail know the mail from that sender is unsolicited.
While your mail may not be unsolicited, it can become unwanted over time and this negatively affects your Sender Reputation. Gmail measures the desirability of your mail using other signals from their users such as deleting a message without opening it and leaving many emails from one sender unopened for an extended period.
To ensure you build and maintain a healthy reputation with Gmail we recommend:
- Only sending emails to people who have directly signed up for your email list as per our Permission To Send guidelines
- Authenticating your sending domain and setting up DKIM at the minimum
- Being consistent with your email volume as most MBPs are wary of sudden spikes in mail traffic from a sender
- Monitoring how your campaigns are performing by reviewing
- Campaign reports
- Insights data especially Engagement by MBPs
- Postmaster dashboard
- Auditing your lists based on recipient engagement; sending re-engagement campaigns to less engaged subscribers and regularly removing dormant contacts from your list
If you do see consistent high spam complaints in Gmail Postmaster Tools, or other deliverability issues, here's three things you can do to improve your results:
- Audit all signup sources and list collection methods, and change them if they don't require explicit, direct action by the subscriber to opt in
- Focus on sending to your most active and engaged audience and exclude inactive contacts for the next few campaigns
- Remove dormant contacts, people who have shown no activity or engagement within the last 12 months
We've seen significant improvement with other customers when lists are carefully and routinely managed based on recipient engagement.