Improving Gmail Delivery

Lately I’m hearing a lot of people talk about delivery problems at Gmail. I’ve written quite a bit about Gmail (Another way Gmail is different, Gmail filtering in a nutshell, Poor delivery at Gmail but no where else, Insight into Gmail filtering) over the last year and a half or so. But those articles all focus on different parts of Gmail delivery and it’s probably time for a summary type post.

Gmail is different

There are two major reasons that Gmail filtering is different from the other webmail providers: when it was launched and who it was launched by.
Gmail entered the mail market late in the internet era when compared to other free email providers. AOL offered internet email in 1992; Yahoo Mail opened in 1994; Hotmail debuted in 1996. When these systems were in development, spam wasn’t an issue.
Spam filtering was added later, as the problem grew. Gmail didn’t launch until 2004, nearly a decade after their current competitors. Spam was already a problem by 2004, so Gmail was able to build filters in from the beginning.
The other real difference is Google’s experience and expertise in search. They built their business on being able to take lots and lots of data, categorize it and make it instantly searchable. This actually translates well to spam filtering, in that they take lots of data, categorize it and put it in appropriate mailboxes.
Those aren’t the only reasons Gmail is different. Another factor is Gmail’s attitude towards senders. The prime example is their FBL. Unlike most ISPs, Gmail doesn’t provide the full message back in its FBL. Instead, they give a count of complaints. They’re not going to help senders remove folks who complain. The flip side of this is they are leading the way in providing easier ways to unsubscribe.
The different history, expertise, and attitude of Google are the core of why Gmail delivery is so unlike others.

Metrics look great

The standard diagnostic for problem is to investigate the metrics, identify areas where they show limits and work to improve them. Along the way, email delivery improves. At Gmail, however, there’s often nothing obviously wrong with the metrics. The problem is the metrics we’re using are measuring symptoms not identifying underlying issues. Think of all the metrics we use as a fever. Just because a fever is gone (or you don’t have one) doesn’t mean you’re not sick.
Metrics are proxy measurements. The best metrics in the world aren’t going to help your delivery at Gmail if the recipients don’t want your mail.
The Recipient Has To Want Your Mail.

Why is Gmail so hard?

Because Gmail is smarter than we are.
Because Gmail looked at the things other companies did and learned what worked to decrease spam and what worked to decrease signs of spam (those are different things).
Because Gmail has years and years of experience in dealing with people who game SEO listings.
Because Gmail puts the user experience ahead of the sender experience.

Spam-infused Mai-Tai
Who didn't invent email, part 2

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Engagement, Engagement, Engagement

I saw a headline today:
New Research from Return Path Shows Strong Correlation Between Subscriber Engagement and Spam Placement
I have to admit, my first reaction was “Uh, Yeah.” But then I realized that there are some email marketers who do not believe engagement is important for email deliverability. This is exactly the report they need to read. It lays out the factors that ISPs look at to determine if email is wanted by the users. Senders have to deal with vague metrics like opens and clicks, but the ISPs have access to user behavior. ISPs can see if mail is replied to, or forwarded or deleted without reading. They monitor if a user hits “this-is-spam” or moves the message to their junk folder. All of these things are signals about what the users want and don’t want.
Still, there are the folks who will continue to deny engagement is a factor in deliverability. Most of the folks in this group profit based on the number of emails sent. Therefore, any message about decreasing sends hurts their bottom line. These engagement deniers have set out to discredit anyone who suggests that targeting, segmentation or engagement provide for better email delivery and getting emails to the inbox.
There’s another group of deniers who may or may not believe engagement is the key to the inbox, but they don’t care. They have said they will happily suffer with lower inbox delivery if it means they can send more mail. They don’t necessarily want to discredit deliverability, but they really don’t like that deliverability can stop them from sending.
Whether or not you want to believe engagement is a critical factor in reaching your subscribers, it is. Saying it’s not doesn’t change the facts.
There are three things important in deliverability: engagement, engagement, engagement.

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From the archives: Taking Permission

From February 2010, Taking Permission.

Permission is always a hot topic in email marketing. Permission is key! the experts tell us. Get permission to send email! the ISPs tell us.
Marketers have responded by setting up processes to “get” permission from recipients before adding them to mailing lists. They point to their privacy polices and signup forms and say “Look! the recipient gave us permission.”
In many cases, though, the permission isn’t given to the sender, permission is taken from the recipient.
Yes, permission is being TAKEN by the sender. At the point of address collection many senders set the default to be the recipient gets mail. These processes take any notion of giving permission out of the equation. The recipient doesn’t have to give permission, permission is assumed.
This isn’t real permission. No process that requires the user to take action to stop themselves from being opted in is real permission. A default state of yes takes the actual opt-in step away from the recipient.
Permission just isn’t about saying “well, we told the user if they gave us an email address we’d send them mail and they gave us an email address anyway.” Permission is about giving the recipients a choice in what they want to receive. All too often senders take permission from recipients instead of asking for permission to be given.
Since that post was originally written, some things have changed.
CASL has come into effect. CASL prevents marketers from taking permission as egregiously as what prompted this post. Under CASL, pre-checked opt-in boxes do not count as explicit permission. The law does have a category of implicit permission, which consists of an active consumer / vendor relationship. This implicit permission is limited in scope and senders have to stop mailing 2 years after the last activity.
The other change is in Gmail filters. Whatever they’re doing these days seems to really pick out mail that doesn’t have great permission. Business models that would work a few years ago are now struggling to get to the inbox at Gmail. Many of these are non-relationship emails – one off confirmations, tickets, receipts. There isn’t much of a relationship between the sender and the recipient, so the filters are biased against the mail.
Permission is still key, but these days I’m not sure even informed permission is enough.

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Sharing access to Google Postmaster Tools

As a delivery consultant, I always ask clients to share their Google postmaster reports with me. As Gmail is one of the bigger delivery challenges for a lot of senders, having access to the postmaster tools helps tease out issues. I had some issues earlier this week getting access to tools and so brought up a conversation on one of the delivery lists. The nice folks there helped me get it solved.
A few hours later someone asked me how do I get access and I thought that was a brilliant idea for a blog post today.

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