If you’ve been sending emails to Gmail users and they’re not getting through, there’s a good chance that your domain has been tagged in Gmail’s domain blacklist. Your emails may be sent directly to spam or the trash, and it can happen for many reasons.
There are a few things you can do to help avoid this situation:
Users with a domain under a GSuite or Google Workspace account:
- Your domain administrator has access to 24/7 support from Google (hours of operation may vary).
- You can also go to https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/checkmx/ and enter your domain. It’s a quick checker to see any improvements you can address to make sure that emails from your domain will always go through smoothly to your recipients.
Non GSuite users:
Affiliate Marketers
- If you have affiliate marketers that have been associated with spam, this can be a cause for your emails to be marked as spam, too.
- Monitor your affiliate marketers regularly and remove any partners that send spam emails.
Email Authentication
- If your emails are authenticated, Gmail is less likely to tag your emails as spam.
- To do so, set up either a SPF or DKIM record at your domain. If at least one of these records are not found from the sending domain, these messages will be either rejected or marked as spam in the recipient’s inbox.
- For more information in setting up an SPF record, click here.
Message Formatting
- Your From: header should only include one email address. Here’s an example:
From: [email protected] - The subject of your email can be a tad vague to keep your recipient’s interest, but should NEVER BE MISLEADING.
- If you have links included in your email, they should be visible and be obvious to the readers what link they would be redirected to. (Go to URLs / Links in your Email)
Possible Delivery Issues
- If you are using a third-party email marketing or automation service and your emails are not going through properly, best to contact your provider to make sure that they are aligned with Google’s email delivery guidelines.
Subscribing and Unsubscribing
- Make it easy for your mailing list to subscribe and unsubscribe.
- There should be a prominent link where your recipients can opt in or opt out from receiving your messages.
- Look into people on your list with bounced messages, or have not opened or read your emails and consider unsubscribing them from your end.
- A one-click unsubscribe can be set up for Gmail recipients. Simply include one or both of these headers in your outgoing messages:
- List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click
- List-Unsubscribe: <https://solarmora.com/unsubscribe/example>
TLS
- Check your TLS here: https://www.checktls.com/TestReceiver
- While Google Workspace supports TLS versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3, it is recommended that you have at least version 1.2 or later enabled for your domain.
URLs / Links in your Email
- To make sure your links are marked safe by Google, validate them here: https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search. Enter your URL and it should be good to go if the results look like this:
- Your links must have the “https” prefix instead of “http”. Aside from its secure protocol (backed by SSL/TLS encryption), it also confirms that your website or your links are genuine and not spam.
