Engagement: Gmail cares about engagement and domain reputation the most. Send relevant emails to your subscribers to keep them engaged. If you are experiencing deliverability issues at Gmail, only send to your most engaged subscribers (i.e. those who have engaged within the last 15 or 30 days) to help improve your sender reputation and for better inbox placement.
Consistent Send Volume: Maintain consistent send volume to maintain the reputation of your dedicated IPs. Avoid spiking your volume to maintain your domain & IP reputation. Typically, senders are recommended to send a minimum of 1,000 emails per day to Gmail users for Gmail to notice your sends & assign a reputation. If after warming up, you start sending too less for a long time then your domain/IP reputation might not be visible in Google Postmaster and you might have to start warming up again from scratch.
Keep your Spam Rate Low: Keep monitoring your spam rate at Google Postmaster. A high spam rate can impact your reputation and result in Gmail bulk-placing your emails in spam or junk folders.
Gmail spam rate calculation = # of spam complaints / Total # of Active recipients
Opt-ins: Make sure you have explicit permission to mail your subscribers. Mail to your opted-in database.
Email Content: When talking about Gmail’s best practices, email content plays an important role. Make sure to refresh your creatives every few months so your content isn’t finger-printed as Spam.
Email Size: Keep your email size under 102KB to avoid email clipping in Gmail. You find the estimated email (template) size in the campaign summary under the Message section.
Segment based on Engagement & Preferences: When building custom audiences in Bluecore, divide the segments by engagement and leverage shopper preferences (like categories or discounts) to send the right content to the right audience.
Track Beyond Opens: Keep your spam complaints and unsubscribe rates low.
Keep Your Lists Clean: Don’t send to an old list without validating the shoppers on it. Make sure that the email addresses on your list are valid and won’t bounce.
Follow these best practices to ensure Gmail is delivering your email sends.
Updated over a week ago