Gmail is one of the largest and most popular email platform segments. For many B2C organisations, Gmail can easily make up over 35% of a database.

In order to maintain healthy email engagement, achieving a good Sender Reputation to Gmail is crucial for any successful email marketing operation.

Best practice

Poor ratings on your Sender IP and Sending Domain can result in Gmail imposing penalties on your emails, including flagging your email as spam and not delivering the emails to recpient inboxes.

Gaining visibility over your Sender Reputation allows you as a marketer to better fine tune your campaigns to ensure good engagement.

Therefore, Gmail have developed tools for marketers to monitor their activity. Simply Google Gmail Postmaster tools to get set up.

Stay sticky

Google also likes customers to stay sticky to their product ecosystem. Google Plus is one way to strengthen your sender reputation with Gmail.

On top of improved deliverability, an added benefit of linking your Google Plus profile to your domain is the ability to customise your logo that appears within a recipient’s Gmail inbox on the mobile app.

Bucket list

Google have also setup guidelines that email marketers should try to adhere to. Below are some points to adhere to:

·      Provide a URL based instant unsubscribe option

·      Avoid using a reply-to email unsubscribe method

·      Avoid using URL shorteners or URL redirection services (i.e Bit.Ly)

·      Explicitly indicate the email address subscribed to your list.

Engagement

Finally, the biggest deciding factor on your Sender Reputation to Gmail is going to be engagement. If your subscribers are not reading or clicking on your emails, your engagement will suffer and Gmail will recognise that.

Therefore, it is important to ensure that the content you send to your subscribers will be of value to them.

Don’t be afraid to purge subscribers that show extended patterns of inactivity. Keeping inactive subscribers will only make it more difficult for your emails to be delivered and potentially preventing active subscribers from receiving content.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wei Tan has over eight years digital marketing experience and is currently Co-founder of email marketing agency The Orchard. Wei has a passion for email marketing and works closely with some of Australia’s best known brands in developing tailored email marketing programs focused on delivering solutions based on three core principles: Growth, Conversion & Retention.