Gmail Deliverability Best Practices

Let’s first go over the main factors that influence email deliverability for Gmail:

You should avoid these as much as possible.

They happen when recipients of your email mark your messages as spam or send them directly to the spam box. Over time, Gmail will begin to recognize that your address and messages are being constantly sent to spam, and will simply remove the middle step for recipients.

How to avoid this?

Make sure that you are offering value in your message. Whether it is a newsletter or a cold email, make sure that it is relevant and useful for the prospect you are contacting.

Everything, from your subject line to your greeting to your CTA, has to be centered and specific to your audience.

Demonstrate your value to them.

This refers to the response rate or click-through your email messages have and your senders’ reputation.

You need to have some form of response to your emails so that it does not seem like you are a spammer. Spammers will send out tons of emails per day hoping to find someone who will fall for their trap.

Salespeople and marketers also send out tons of emails per day, but your goal is to have a response. Whether that is a click-through or a direct response to your email, your copy needs to be relevant and valuable enough to ensure a response.

Keeping engagement high through good, clean copy, internal seeding and the use of a warm up tool tells Gmail that it is an active email address and not spam.

We’ve provided an in-depth review of email authentication forms elsewhere, but it essentially proves to Gmail that you care about ensuring that you are who you say you are. And that others are who they say they are.

It is unlikely for a spammer to go through the authentication process, as it would be difficult for them to go through it successfully.

Unlike a spammer, salespeople and marketers are representatives of their company or business and want to ensure that their own domain is also protected. Going through the process of email authentication demonstrates this, and that the messages they are sending have importance and value to their recipients.

Finally, a new IP domain or address that has never been used before needs to be warmed up properly for sales or marketing purposes for Gmail to recognize it.

Email warming is not a difficult task, but it is one that many people skip or forget about when preparing a new account.

This would be a grave mistake as it directly affects your engagement rate and can send you straight to spam from the get-go – a difficult hole you must then climb out of.

Taking this step from the very beginning is a way to ensure you start your sending to Gmail on the right foot.

Having learned about some factors to keep in mind when sending emails to Gmail accounts, let’s review best practices for best results for deliverability when it comes to Gmail:

It’s come up in other articles in our blog, but you want to keep your email copy as clean as possible, especially if you are sending out a lot of cold emails.

Newsletters have more of a pass, but even then, you want to keep everything as clean as possible.

Avoid bolding or italicizing anywhere in your text, even your signature. Avoid hyperlinks and images, as well as attachments. All of these may trigger spam filters.

Take the step that spammers do not and verify that you are indeed who you say you are.

That you do not want a spammer spoofing your own address to send out emails on your behalf, and you also want to only receive legitimate emails.

By doing so, you demonstrate that you care about protecting both your company and your prospects, and Gmail’s filters will read your emails as legitimate and verifiable.

If you’re unsure if your email address is authenticated, you can use our DKIM/SPF checker to check!

Any time you’re setting up a new domain or run into issues with an existing domain, it’s a good idea to turn to an email warm up tool such as Warm.

It will create email threads and responses for you from your address to others, thereby increasing your engagement rates and helping your email come across as more legitimate to Gmail spam filters.

Going over your lead lists and making sure that the emails are accurate and that everyone still works there may take time, but it is essential to keeping your email deliverability healthy.

The more unverified email accounts you send to, the less healthy your senders’ reputation becomes. And the less likely you are to get through Gmail’s spam filters.

Take some time to every week to check your lead lists to avoid falling into spam – it’s worth it!

Any sales professional worth your time knows this, but it is always a good reminder.

Personalize your emails and segment the messaging according to your audiences.

Don’t send the marketing teams and the finance teams the same messaging – chances are, it will not work.

Spend your time on your research and email copy to provide value for different audiences that will interest them. Demonstrate your knowledge of the industry and its pain points, and how your product or service fits.

And use some humor to stand out while you’re at it!

If you need to, slow down your sending, but keep a constant amount of ten to thirty a day going.

Stopping cold turkey will be more detrimental than anything, so just slowly send less overtime before ramping up again.

Keep an eye on how your email deliverability is doing as this happens, and increase or decrease sending incrementally weekly.

Having a dedicated address or domain for cold emailing is a great way to generate cold seeding and manual email warm up. It is also great for tools.

Should anything happen to its deliverability, you can keep an eye on it without it harming your main address or domain that you actively use for internal or external purposes.

With AI becoming more common, it is easy for salespeople and marketers to delegate their writing to such tools.

But writing like a robot will harm your deliverability the moment Gmail recognizes certain patterns.

As always, it is best to take your time with your email copy, demonstrate your empathy as a fellow human, and personalize your approach to your prospect and their needs as much as possible.

Gmail is far and away the most common email provider you will find, whether it is for individuals or companies.

You need to make sure your emails are landing in inboxes for Gmail more than for any other ISP.

Keeping in mind the factors outlined above and the best practices we’ve suggested, you are sure to see success in your email campaigns.

And remember, you can always join the Warm launch list, so you can access our email warm up tool as soon as it’s ready!