The Gmail Inbox Demystified: Table of Contents 

What You Don't Know About Gmail May Already Be Hurting You

Gmail may still be the new ISP kid on the block, but since it currently and consistently boasts the most highly active users, you should know how Gmail works so that you can take the steps needed to ensure the very best inbox delivery rates to the Gmail users on your list. While Yahoo! still boasts the greatest number of accounts, Gmail users are typically more active- that is, they spend more time in their e-mail account and receive more mail per month than users of any other ISP. For example, in a test run by one major ESP during the month of April, 2011, their users sent nearly 197 million messages to Gmail addresses, whereas the same users sent just 190 million and 183 million to Hotmail and Yahoo! addresses, respectively.

Why should you care?

Well, because Gmail differs in the methods they use to decide which e-mails will make it into users’ inboxes and which will get sent into the dreaded spam box. Let’s take a look at the systems it uses to sort its incoming mail in and out of its users’ inboxes.

Unlike other major providers, Gmail relies heavily on the feedback of its users to judge sender reputation. Not shockingly, the better your sending reputation, the more likely your e-mails are to get into the inbox. What kind of feedback are we talking about here?

Sender Reputation

Well, Gmail tracks how many times messages are sent automatically to the spam box vs. the inbox and if a sender’s e-mails are going right to the spam box then Gmail lowers that sender’s reputation. So by allowing your messages to go to their spam box (whether knowingly or not) your contacts are actually causing your sender reputation with Gmail to sink, as a whole. Given this, it’s vital that users who aren’t opening or clicking your emails are removed from your list.

Gmail also gleans feedback from its users in other ways. They monitor when their users manually mark messages as spam by clicking the ‘spam’ button within the Gmail interface. But Gmail also takes note when their users “star” messages, indicating that message is important.

They take all of these things into account and then run the data through a series of calculations which creates your final reputation score with Gmail; the higher the better!

When someone hits the “this is spam” button for a message you’ve sent them, you get a complaint against you. However neither you nor your ESP will be notified and you will thus continue sending mail to the recipient; though it will likely go straight to the spam box from then on, which will continue to lower your reputation even more, in a snowball effect. Yuck.

Content Filtering

On top of their unique reputation scoring system, Gmail employs a sophisticated content filtering system. They search through the body of messages sent and look for things like bad (poorly written) HTML, text-to-images ratios (your target ratio should be 80% text to 20% images), attachments (avoid attachments whenever possible, hyperlinking to your files instead), key words (spam words like F.ree, phat, pills, etc), broken or inaccurate links or links to blacklisted domains, malware and other spammy pages.

The September 2010 release of their Priority inbox feature brought Gmail one step closer to a world where their users see only the e-mail that matters to them.

What you can do

As you can see, there are a lot of ways your mail can end up in the junk box of the gmail users on your list. So, to ensure the best delivery possible you need to keep your list free of old and inactive addresses. Clear out inactive, unengaged contacts at least semi annually. You can employ what we call an Active Re-engagement Campaign that will continuously clean these people off your list automatically. To learn more about Active Re-engagement Campaign, and even have one up and running in your account in minutes, click here.

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Another option is to allow your subscribers to choose how often they’d like to get e-mail from you. Some users may only want monthly newsletters while others may be okay with weekly or even daily messages. By allowing users to choose the frequency with which you mail them you afford them greater control over their own experience. With that increase in freedom will come fewer unsubscribes and complaints. People will be happier on your list and will open and click more of your e-mails!

Here's how to do this:

1. Create a dropdown type field called (something like) "How often do you care to receive mail from us?".
2. Add that field to your opt-in SmartForms.
3. Create Active Response Rules that subscribe your contacts to sequences that mail with less frequency if they so indicate on the form, and to sequences that mail with greater frequency if they indicated they wanted to be mailed more frequently.

Delivery questions? Give our delivery team a call by dialing into support 1-888-767-7429 and asking for the e-mail delivery and abuse department!  Or send us an e-mail at support@sendpepper.com.

FAQs

Relevant Links 

http://blog.mailchimp.com/major-email-provider-trends-update-gmail-pretty-much-caught-up/
http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statistics.htm
http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/14/gmail-nudges-past-aol-email-in-the-us-to-take-no-3-spot/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacn
http://www.returnpath.net/blog/intheknow/2011/07/marketers-field-guide-gmail-inboxes/