by Kevin Senne As we’ve talked about previously, Gmail is tough on deliverability. The lack of information and interaction makes it difficult to work with Gmail the same way we’ve been conditioned to interact with more open ISP’s like Yahoo and Hotmail. That doesn’t mean it is impossible to excel at Gmail. Here are some proven strategies that will help change the way your Gmail subscribers see your messages. The most notable change is in the Inbox vs. the Bulk Folder!
What Does Gmail Say?
“Gmail users can mark and unmark any message as spam, at any time. To increase the inbox delivery rate of your messages, make sure that all recipients on your distribution lists actually want to receive the mail.”
“As long as our users don’t consider your mail as spam, you shouldn’t have inbox placement issues.”
What Does Gmail Like?
Gmail is all about engagement. The whole premise of Gmail is that conversations and labels help their users keep a clean and tidy Inbox. Engaged users are ones who interact with messages they receive. Engagement means opening, clicking, and scrolling. Engagement also means not marking as spam, not filtering, and not marking as read without doing so.
Gmail is cutting edge in some respects, but old-school with other metrics. Gmail pays a lot of attention to the subject line and words used in the email. Remember all of those “spammy” words we paid a lot of attention to in the past? They are back with a vengeance.
Winning Strategies for Gmail Deliverability Success
- Be Relevant and Engaging – Send Gmail users mail they want to receive. Gmail is not the place to push the envelope with crazy content and cross promotion.
- Tighten the Audience – Keep your audience tight. Consider a 6-9 month active audience.
- Be Sticky – Encourage users to add you to the address book, star your messages, and mark as important. All of these positives make a big difference.
- Subject Lines are Huge – Be short and to the point with subject lines. Avoid any words that could be construed as spammy. Don’t use words and phrases like “last chance, hurry, free, only, and limited time.”
- Keep Lists Clean – Limit bounces as much as possible. Of course, we’ve taken care of this by cutting down our lists.
If you follow these suggestions and pay attention to what Gmail users
are telling you with their actions, you should see deliverability
metrics at Gmail improve.
hi kevin – what’s the take on sending emails FROM Gmail to a group of contacts. how is deliverability then? thx phil
Hi Phil. In theory you shouldn’t be sending more than a few messages from a Gmail account. In these scenarios, deliverability should not be an issue. In general it takes bulk email to cause deliverability problems. I would not expect you to have any issues delivering individual messages from your Gmail account.
I think it was the threat of a Gmail revolution that prompted Yahoo to increase the storage space parceled to its free email accounts last year. (Yahoo’s paid email at the time, of course, gave storage to spare. It’s an example of how the whiff of corporate competition can benefit end users or consumers.) Who remembers rummaging through our Yahoo email accounts deleting emails only weeks, if not days, old? I think Yahoo copied their color coded warning system of diminishing storage space from the easy-to-comprehend terror levels issued by the federal government. Gmail’s arrival, though, changed this – we were ready for something better. Its search-based organization, something we like to see at ConductSearch.com, figured to be a natural step for email world to take.*”
Cheers
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